Acyl Chloride
by Nalanzu
Summary: A series of pieces revolving around Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke, over time. Slash.
1. Pit Stop

Note: Set between Green Lantern v3 #76 and Green Arrow 110.

* * *

"Excuse me."

At least, Kyle reflected, this individual was polite after having stepped out in the middle of the road in front of Kyle's ringed construct car.

"I couldn't help notice that your car is green, and glowing, and just the slightest bit translucent."

Short brownish-blond hair, freckles, and muddy green eyes gave no clues as to the gender of the possibly crazy person who'd jumped into the road, and neither did the stocky body encased in loose clothing that was also gender-indeterminate. It was really starting to bother Kyle, although of all the things that he could have worried about, whether or not the person standing in front of him was a girl probably shouldn't have been high on the list.

"So I thought maybe one or both of you were superheroes, and if that's the case, I sort of have a favor to ask."

Even the voice didn't give any hints – it was deep for a woman and high for a man, right in the middle of the very narrow range of overlap.

"What do you need?" Connor asked easily, as if he got this kind of thing all the time. He probably did.

Relief spread over the person's face. "This is probably going to sound ridiculous, but there is something very strange about the remains of the mine shaft a couple miles that way."

More detailed questioning – mostly on Connor's part – elicited the story of some odd activity and odder sightings centering around an abandoned mine that had very probably been part of the one that had featured so prominently in the story Ollie had told Connor about his and Hal's visit to the town of Desolation. As much as Kyle wanted to keep going and find his father, he couldn't in good conscience ignore what could very possibly be an alien invasion or mad science or who knew what wackiness, although he really wished the police had been saddled with this instead.

Perhaps an hour later, hiding behind a very large tree with the occasional bullet whizzing past his ears, Kyle reflected that simply driving _around_ the androgynous crazy person would have been the better option.

_"You go first," Connor had said. The two of them were hiding behind some trees and some very large rocks that might or might not have come from inside the mine shaft many years ago. They were growing moss, so they certainly hadn't been moved recently. Kyle's ring hadn't shown any sign of aliens or mad science inside the mine, but it had detected massive quantities of firearms hidden behind a very clever blind that explained the locals' conviction that the mine was both caved in and empty when the alleged visitors from outer space weren't actively using it. Connor was a little relieved that the strange invaders had turned out to be perfectly normal gunrunners instead of aliens – it was more familiar ground. Aliens were a Lantern's purview, not an Arrow's._

_"What am I, your canary?"_

_"You're invulnerable. You go first." Connor paused and added, "If you get shot, then we'll find another way in."_

_"Look, I don't know what you might or might not have heard from anyone about how this thing works -" Kyle waved his left hand vaguely in Connor's general direction, wiggling his ring finger "- but mine does not automatically protect me from lethal damage."_

_"Quit whining," Connor told him, politely not mentioning Kyle had been waving the wrong finger, not to mention the wrong hand entirely. "You can make stuff. So make stuff. Go see if anyone's in there."_

_Muttering to himself, Kyle encased himself in a thin green shell and moved towards the mine shaft in what he obviously thought was a sneaky manner. Connor nearly buried his face in his hands – Kyle still had a lot to learn about being a superhero, most powerful piece of jewelry in the universe on his finger or not – but he valiantly kept watching his friend's silliness in case something went wrong._

_Actual danger came in the form of a veritable hail of bullets that knocked Kyle flat. Connor couldn't see where they were coming from, but he had an arrow nocked anyway, ready to run out and drag Kyle back to safety in what would be a brief pause following his shot. It turned out to be unnecessary, as Kyle crabwalked back behind the nearest object big enough to hide him from the gunmen, letting his green armor go as soon as he was there._

"I told you this was a bad idea," Kyle called out, brushing wood chips out of his hair.

"You said no such thing," Connor replied calmly.

"Fine." Kyle ringed a mirror to peer around the tree, and it was promptly shattered by a flying bit of lead. He frowned and ringed the next one to be intangible. There were at least three men with large guns standing inside the entrance to the shaft and possibly more behind them. "You know what, I got this."

The act of creating a warhorse with armor and weaponry to match didn't go as smoothly as Kyle had imagined it, but he didn't actually fall off and the armor stopped the new wave of bullets as he swept toward the mine. The smugglers' look of total shock as he swept down was enough to make Kyle laugh in exhilaration. One, two, three and the three shooters were laid out. He let the charger vanish, landing lightly on his feet, and was turning back to grin triumphantly at Connor when the fourth smuggler clubbed him upside the head and everything went very strange for …

Flickering orange light pressed against his sight when he could finally see clearly again. Connor was crouched in front of him, but his voice sounded wavery at first, and it wasn't until the second repetition that Kyle figured out that Connor wanted to know how many fingers he was holding up.

"Three?"

"That's a better answer than pudding," Connor said, which made no sense at all, so Kyle ignored it.

"Where are the, uh…" Kyle's head hurt, the pain traceable to a knot on his skull, which told him that logically they'd been fighting someone, and he clearly remembered not running someone over although he probably should have (the logic of that particular conviction escaped him, so he ignored it, too), which might or might not have been the catalyst for the chain of events he didn't quite remember that had ended up with a campfire and a headache.

"Police," Connor said. "But after that riot in the diner, I thought maybe it was best if they found the smugglers and not us."

"Oh, come on, that was miles and miles away." Kyle knew he was on firm ground here. They were probably in another jurisdiction entirely.

"Yeah, well, if someone had been able to keep his temper in check," Connor said under his breath. Kyle let it go, more interested in the size of the knot on the back of his head than whose fault the diner brawl had been. "How are you feeling?" Connor asked, in a voice that very closely resembled the ideal of "out loud."

"Peachy," Kyle said, wincing as he found more pain than he would have liked. "What did I get hit with, a bus?"

"A really big gun, in your words," Connor told him. "We can camp out here, if you like, and keep going in the morning."

Not driving sounded like a good idea. Kyle voiced his agreement and wiggled around until Connor was no longer between him and the campfire. It was warm and bright, and this was possibly the first time he had ever had a campfire, but that didn't explain why Connor was laughing quietly.

"What?" Kyle asked.

"It's just that most of the trouble you get into seems to involve women," Connor said, and a bit of the fog around Kyle's memory lifted. The possibly crazy person of no identifiable gender who had jumped in front of his car was clear in his mind's eye, although that was not the memory he wanted.

"Wait, that was a woman? How could you tell?"

Connor gave him a strange look. "How could you not?"

For a moment, Kyle wondered if he was forgetting something else, but Connor's mouth twitched and he realized that he was being teased. "Hardy har har," he said. "I'm going to get some sleep."

"Uh, that might not be –"

Kyle waved his ring. "This'll fix most damage."

"I thought your bruises from that diner brawl healed quickly." Connor started poking at the fire, doing arcane and obscure things to it that didn't have much effect as far as Kyle could tell. One more thing to not pay attention to.

"One of the advantages to this thing." Kyle grinned at his friend.

"If your constructs would stay in place with you asleep, it would be even more useful." Connor stretched out next to the fire, head resting on his arms. Kyle imitated him, stretching, but he was all cold down one side and the nervousness about meeting his father – suppressed in the fight and its aftermath – was giving him a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.

Kyle would later blame the irrationality of his actions on the side effects of having a probable concussion, but at the moment, crawling between Connor and the campfire and using his friend as a pillow seemed like a good idea. Connor didn't even blink, his infamous Zen calm apparently extending to being used by friends as a combination heat source and security blanket. "Good night, Kyle."

"Mm." The nervousness was still there, but it was manageable now. Whatever his father turned out to be like, he could handle it as long as Connor was there with him. "You too."

FINIS


	2. Peppermint and Chocolate

"Are you ready?" Connor tugged impatiently at the back of his gloves.

"Almost." Kyle's head popped into view around the corner of the doorframe. He was wearing what looked like at least two clashing scarves over a jacket, and a pair of fluffy gloves hung out of one pocket. Fuzzy boots encased his feet, and he was tugging at them, although Connor wasn't quite sure why.

"What are you doing?" Connor asked, amused.

"It's _cold_ out there." Kyle found a mismatching hat from somewhere and jammed it over his ears. "Okay, now I'm ready."

"You really are from California," Connor mused, looking him up and down.

"That's snow out there," Kyle said, somewhat indignantly. "It's _frozen_. And every time I look, there's more of it."

"It's not snowing that much," Connor said, holding the door open. Kyle stepped through and locked it behind them. "Besides, this was your idea."

"That's why I'm out here and not inside where it's warm," Kyle said, grumbling at the early and somewhat unseasonable snow. "The my idea thing, not the not snowing that much thing, which is so very relative."

"Can't you, you know," Connor waved a hand vaguely and wiggled his third finger. "Use your ring or something to stay warm?"

"Well, I could." Despite wearing gloves, Kyle managed to shove his hands into his pockets while they walked down the street. "But there's that whole personal gain thing."

"Even though you're the only one left?" Connor asked, curious. As he understood it, Kyle didn't answer to the Green Lantern Corps ior/i the Guardians, as both groups were all either dead or powerless.

Kyle shrugged. "Still."

They went in silence, passing through several subway stops and up to another snow-covered sidewalk, but there was nothing uncomfortable about it. It felt warm, despite the chill in the air. Connor caught Kyle eyeing him more than once, sidelong little glances that he suspected were accompanied by smiles; what with the scarf reaching above Kyle's nose, he wasn't sure.

"What?" he asked, when they had gone another block through the streets, walking slowly enough that had the streets been crowded, they would have been blocking foot traffic. Due to the chill and the weather, there weren't too many people out walking around, and Connor was taking the opportunity to look around curiously.

Kyle's forehead wrinkled in a frown of confusion at Connor's question. "What what?" he asked.

"Nothing," Connor replied, not really wanting to push the issue. Besides, it wasn't really an issue. "Where are we going?"

"Harvard Square," Kyle said, and now Connor was sure he was grinning behind the scarf.

"Obviously," Connor said, not smacking Kyle across the back of the head. Tourist or not, he wasn't completely lost. "Where in Harvard Square?"

"Little coffee shop I know," Kyle said. "Radu makes the best java in town, but I want you to try the cocoa here. It's amazing."

Connor smiled back. He wasn't particularly fond of cocoa – not that he disliked it, but he would have chosen tea over either cocoa or coffee. On the other hand, Kyle was trying to do something thoughtful. "Thanks," he said.

"They might have tea, too," Kyle said. "I think they have tea. Or wait…" He paused in his walking, one hand absently toying with the end of his scarf.

"The cocoa will be fine," Connor assured him, and looped his arm through Kyle's. A patch of ice lurking beneath an innocent seeming drift of snow snatched his foot out from underneath him, and he missed the initial look of surprise on Kyle's face in the sudden battle to keep both feet solidly on the ground. He felt Kyle's hand over his arm, though, and the gentle pressure that helped keep him steady.

"Very graceful," Kyle told him once they'd gotten past the ice patch, but he didn't let go until they had reached the coffee shop in question another hundred yards down the street.

"It's a secret martial arts technique," Connor assured his friend, holding the door open for him again. "Makes your opponent underestimate you so that you can catch him by surprise."

"Is that what it was." Kyle laughed softly, and Connor laughed with him. In their shared warmth, the cocoa was every bit as delicious as Kyle had promised.

TBC


	3. Almost

"Come off-planet, Connor. What's the worst that could happen, Connor? Space is beautiful, Connor, and I want to share it with you." Kyle Rayner buried his face in his hands briefly before checking again to make sure that his friend was still breathing, although he didn't think Connor would actually die. "This was a mistake."

_Several hours earlier:_

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Connor hadn't been this nervous the first time they'd gone into space, but they'd been within sight of Earth that time and doing a very specific task. This time, there was no satellite to hook up, no argument about parents to have. Kyle just wanted to visit a quiet, peaceful little place that he was pretty sure only he knew about and he wanted Connor to see it, too.

"You don't trust me?" Kyle pouted, mostly joking. "It'll be fun. I've been out here before."

"You know, there isn't really a shortage of natural beauty on Earth. We could stay inside our own atmosphere and still see pretty things." Despite the protests, Connor wasn't unhappy that he was apparently being shown something that he couldn't help feeling was important to his friend. On the other hand, he didn't really want to go off-planet, even to share a place that meant something to Kyle.

"I'm not going to drop you," Kyle reassured him. "Come on, this place is gorgeous. You'll love it."

"And that's why you've got a sketchbook," Connor said, quietly enough that he probably thought Kyle couldn't hear him. Kyle did him the favor of pretending he hadn't; it was enough that Connor was going to come with him.

The planet in question, while rather out of the way, was in fact an oasis of natural beauty. Kyle set them down in a small clearing of moss and rock mostly filled by a pool of incredibly clear water. A waterfall sent up enough spray to scatter rainbows across the pool's surface, and the pond drained into a narrow stream rushing through the thickly placed trees. Kyle grinned. "Well?"

"It's blue," Connor said after a moment. "Very, very blue." The leafy foliage of the tall trees was in fact a bright blue, shading to green around the edges, and the moss was a bluish green as well. It offset the greenish sky in a slightly disconcerting manner, until one got used to it.

"Oh, don't put your hands in the running water," Kyle said, as if Connor hadn't just given a less than ringing endorsement of their surroundings. "There are weird fish things living in it and they bite. The pond should be okay, though," he added. "They're sort of an orangey-yellow color, so you can see them coming in there."

Connor snatched his hand back from the stream, the look on his face somewhere between dubious and horrified at the biting not-fish. "Are there really?" he asked after a moment.

"Well, they've got great big teeth," Kyle amended. "But I've never actually been bitten." He held up his sketchbook. "Do you mind?"

Connor shook his head. Only Kyle would drag him across light-years of empty space to wander around an empty – albeit gorgeous and pristine – wilderness while he sketched. "Go ahead," he said, and headed towards the edge of the clearing. "I'm going to go up there," he said.

"Shout at me every so often," Kyle said absently. "Don't fall in any holes. Watch out for the rest of the wildlife. Don't put anything in your mouth."

"Yes, mother." Connor rolled his eyes. There were some reddish flowers growing above the waterfall – he'd seen them when Kyle had flown them in, and they bore a striking resemblance to a plant that had been common around the ashram where he'd grown up and apparently rare everywhere else. He wanted a closer look at them; maybe he could get Kyle to do a sketch for comparison.

It wasn't that much later that Kyle's sketching was interrupted by the realization that he'd forgotten to tell Connor not to touch anything flowering, either. He looked around, but Connor was nowhere to be seen. "Dammit," he said softly, and packed his sketchbook into his bag. "Connor!"

The sound of a person landing lightly behind him was the only warning Kyle had before Connor roughly threw him to the ground. Kyle landed hard, not quite catching his fall on one shoulder. He could feel the ball of the joint nearly dislocate before deciding to stay where it was, but it still hurt. Before he could ask what the hell was going on, Connor was straddling him, hands on either side of his face, and kissing him as if his life depended on it.

For the briefest of moments, Kyle responded. He'd wanted this almost since the moment he'd met Connor, wanted something he knew he couldn't have. Connor's cluelessness about women extended to men, too, and Kyle was sometimes grateful that Connor didn't notice the way he couldn't help looking. Now, though, with Connor pressing him into the ground, Kyle thought that he'd been wrong all this time. Then he saw a flash of distinctive pinkish-red out of the corner of his eye, and everything made sense.

Although his ring protected him against various toxins and other substances, Connor didn't have that defense, and Kyle had all but dumped him in the middle of a flowering tangle of the most potent aphrodisiacs this side of Orion. Still, with Connor's tongue aggressively laying claim to his mouth and hands wandering down Kyle's abdomen, he hesitated. The pollen didn't affect him, but Connor didn't have to know that.

"NO," he said, although the word was muffled by virtue of being spoken into Connor's mouth. He tried to push Connor away, but Connor made a little whimpering noise and fisted his hands in Kyle's shirt.

"I need you," he said softly, and Kyle could see his own reflection in Connor's dilated pupils. "I need you, Kyle, _now_."

"I can't," Kyle said. "I can't." Shame and disgust that he'd even considered taking advantage of his friend filled him, and he pushed Connor away. Connor, unfortunately for Kyle's self-control and sanity, had other ideas, and was much better versed in the art of hand to hand grappling.

"You can, Kyle, _please_," Connor said, still pinning him down after a struggle that took far too long. "I love you."

The words were like a blow to the gut, harsh and painful and taking his breath away. Kyle summoned all the mental strength he had and used the ring to pull Connor off and hold him still.

"It's okay," Connor said, straining against the bonds, and it was all Kyle could do to keep the shape of the construct indeterminate. "I can do anything you want me to do, be anything you want me to be. Don't push me away, Kyle. Don't leave me."

"No." Kyle sat up, hugging his knees to his chest. "I'm so sorry, Connor."

"Kyle…" Connor's face, such a stark contrast to his usual calm and so perfectly what Kyle had wanted to inspire in him, was painful to see. He held Connor in the construct until the pollen finally worked its way out of Connor's system, waited for him to pass out, cleaned him up as best he could, and waited again for him to awaken.

The flowers he burned – all of them. Kyle had enough control with the ring to make sure only the reddish plants and no other part of the forest went up in flames. Even if he couldn't ever come back here – and he wouldn't be able to, not with this memory – he didn't want the place ruined.

The sun was setting when Connor opened his eyes, its dying rays splashing the sky with shades of pink and purple and eerie blue. "Kyle?"

There were so many things Kyle wanted to say, but in the end all he got out was a single syllable. "Yeah?"

"…is it dark?"

"Yeah."

"It wasn't dark when we got here."

"Yeah." What else could he really say?

"Is there something I should know?"

Kyle did not move guiltily to hide his sketchbook; it was already closed and in his bag. He hadn't been able to resist drawing Connor from memory and from life. "No," he said after a moment.

"Kyle, I believe that you believe nothing happened that I need to know about, but I'm not entirely sure that I would agree with you."

Working his way through the convoluted sentence, Kyle shook his head. "You had a run-in with some of the local plants."

"Don't tell me they had teeth," Connor said, looking faintly alarmed.

"Some, um, you were probably hallucinating. I should have warned you. I'm sorry."

"I'm still breathing, you're still breathing. That makes it a good day in my book." Connor was trying to look cheerful, but he had that little furrow between his eyebrows that he only got when he was worried. Kyle couldn't not see it; he watched Connor closely enough to learn all the little quirks his friend had.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "We should probably just go home," he added. "You're probably going to need some sleep." _And a shower,_ he added mentally.

"Okay," Connor said, and Kyle could tell that he was being humored. It just made the thought of what he'd almost done to Connor that much harder to bear.

The trip back to Earth was silent, and Kyle left Connor outside his home without much more than a quiet goodbye. He climbed in the window of his own apartment when he reached it, closing the curtains and pulling the sketchbook out of his bag. He should burn it, shouldn't take the chance that anyone else might see what he'd drawn. In the end, he put the sketchbook at the bottom of a pile in his closet, tightly closed and intact. If there was a more fitting penance for nearly violating his friend than a constant reminder of how his desire had nearly cost him his friendship, he didn't know what it was. Let the sketchbook stand as a reminder of what he could not and should not have – it was no more than right.

TBC


	4. Windows and Coffee

"I really appreciate this, Connor."

"No problem." Connor opened the door wider and took the drawing board from under his friend's arm. "Here, let me get that." Kyle looked like hell, which was nothing new. He was also balancing a ridiculously oversized coffee cup along with his art supplies, which again was nothing new.

"Thanks," he said.

"Are you sure you can just, you know, take off like this?" It wasn't that Connor minded having Kyle stay for a few days or so in order to catch up on work deadlines without everything else getting in the way, but he wondered if Kyle just running out on his responsibilities as Green Lantern was really the right thing to do.

"Hal's picking up the slack," Kyle said, closing the door with his foot. Connor could all but hear the unspoken corollary – _they don't need me._

"If you're sure," Connor said. He'd heard about Hal and his trip forward through time – the Hal Jordan who was currently in the Justice League Watchtower wasn't much older than Kyle. He'd had more training, but less experience, and as much good as Connor had heard about the man, he didn't quite trust him. Kyle seemed to, though, and Connor wasn't about to try and convince him otherwise. Kyle was perfectly capable of making his own decisions.

"Yeah," Kyle replied distractedly. "Can I put this over here?" He'd wandered over to the only south-facing window and was staring out of it.

"Go ahead." Connor followed with the drawing board. He hadn't been in the apartment for more than a few weeks, and wouldn't stay for much longer; he spent most of his time traveling. Kyle's request for what amounted to a place to hide had coincided with Connor's usual traveling partner – Eddie Fyers, longtime friend of his father – leaving temporarily on his own business, and Connor was looking forward to having the company. "How does this thing work?"

"Oh, right." The drawing board wasn't actually difficult to set up, but Kyle had been staring at the same point of nothing for several minutes. "Here." It was a matter of minutes to get it settled, and then Kyle suddenly frowned and shook his coffee cup. "Got any coffee around here?"

"No," Connor started. "But I could go get some," he finished with a sigh.

By the morning of the third day, Connor was starting to think the coffee, at the very least, was a bad idea. As far as he could tell, Kyle hadn't actually slept and his increasingly short temper was beginning to get on Connor's nerves, not to mention Kyle's disturbing propensity for bad takeout food swimming in animal products. Connor had tried cooking for him for the first two days, only to find Kyle too immersed in drawing and redrawing pieces for his deadlines to pay any attention to mundane things like food and then suddenly there were takeout cartons accumulating under the chair. (At least they were neatly contained in a trash can, although that was nearly to the point of overflow.) Connor had restrained himself more than once from the phrase "Eat your goddamn vegetables, Kyle."

"Yaaa!" came a shout from the window, followed by the neighbor's cat – which had taken an inexplicable liking to Kyle – streaking through the open door, tail fluffed and claws skidding on the floor. Connor opened his eyes, attempts at meditation ruined for the fourth time that day by Kyle's reaction to the cat climbing on his lap. It had been funny the first time, but one would think either Kyle or the cat would learn to react – or act – differently.

"Stop scaring the cat, Kyle." Connor padded into the other room in bare feet, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder.

A violent start nearly threw his hand off, Kyle clearly suppressing another yelp. "Don't _do_ that," he said after a moment. Connor could all but feel Kyle's heart pounding in adrenaline-induced reaction.

"I thought you Lanterns were supposed to be fearless," he said teasingly.

"That's Hal," Kyle snapped. "And everyone else."

_Wrong button, Connor._ "Sorry," he offered, starting to gather up the paper coffee cups. There were so many he was beginning to wonder if they were breeding.

"Yeah, me too." Kyle put down his current pencil – graphite, 2H – and rubbed his eyes. "Got any coffee?" he said hopefully.

Connor looked at the stack of empty cups in his hand. "Maybe the caffeine's not such a good idea," he said. "Coffee doesn't really count as food."

"If I don't get this done on time, I am so screwed." From what Connor could tell, all the crumpled paper on the floor meant that Kyle was not progressing towards making his deadline in any case. "I'm almost done. Really."

Connor did not ask if the ring was telepathic. "Maybe you should step back for a little while, look at it from another angle."

"I don't have time to step back!" Kyle stood, nearly knocking the chair over. "I need to get this done, Connor. That's why I came to you."

"When was the last time you slept?" Connor countered. "I understand that you need to work, but if you can't work as Green Lantern maybe this isn't the day job you should be doing."

"Should, should, should," Kyle spat back. "Hal's Green Lantern again. It's not my name, it never was. It was always Hal."

"Calm down, Kyle." Connor put up his hands in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. It did not have the intended effect.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" Kyle was shouting now, and Connor was beginning to feel a slow burn.

"Look, you came to me! The least you could do is be polite!" The moment he'd said the words, he winced; it wasn't what he'd meant at all, or what he'd wanted to say. Kyle wasn't the only one with a volatile temper.

"If that's the way you feel, then fine! I'm gone!" Kyle started throwing pencils, markers, everything at hand haphazardly into the first bag he found.

"Kyle. Kyle!" Connor grabbed his friend by the shoulders and forcibly turned him around. Kyle was breathing hard, anger quivering in every muscle. "I'm worried about you," he said softly.

"I…" Kyle looked at him directly for the first time in three days and leaned forward. "I've figured it out," he said, and Connor was trying to parse the sentence when Kyle kissed him. He was surprised enough that he didn't pull away, and Kyle took that as an invitation to pull Connor closer. For someone who spent most of his time not training, Kyle was surprisingly strong. It was the taste of coffee that broke Connor's temporary paralysis – Kyle was, in his limited experience, a damn good kisser, but Connor did not like coffee no matter what form it came in.

"Okay," he said, pushing Kyle back.

"I am so sorry." Kyle had misinterpreted; he was blushing and the look of acute horror on his face said more than words ever could. "Connor, I am sorry. I didn't mean to do that."

"Kyle, it's okay." He wasn't sure exactly why Kyle was apologizing; if he'd really objected, Kyle would have known. Without the ring – which was back at Kyle's apartment being guarded by Kyle's temporary roommate – Kyle wouldn't have a chance. "It was nice."

Kyle blinked. "….nice?" he said, brain obviously trying to catch up with perception.

"I don't like coffee," Connor said, gently pushing Kyle towards the bathroom. "Shower. Brush your teeth. Then maybe we can give it another shot."

The blinking did not stop, but Kyle continued under his own power. The sound of water flowing followed, and Connor took the opportunity to get rid of the accumulated trash (how could the man drink so much coffee and not explode? Truly, the human body was a mystery). The shower didn't take long, and Kyle emerged wearing a handtowel and soaking wet. "Um, Connor?"

As much as he would have liked to enjoy the view, it was spoiled by the unavoidable fact that despite the shower, Kyle looked like worse hell than he had when he'd arrived. On the other hand, the handtowel was pretty funny. "Oh, right," Connor said, and dug a larger towel out of what passed for a linen closet (a box currently serving double duty as a table). "Here." Kyle just stood there, staring, so Connor wrapped the towel around his shoulders and used the ends to start toweling Kyle's hair dry.

"Mm." Kyle closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. Connor took it as a cue to move downwards, running the soft cloth over Kyle's exhausted face and down his shoulders. He'd reached Kyle's waist when Kyle leaned down and kissed him again, softly. Connor returned the kiss this time, tangling his hands in Kyle's still damp hair.

"Over here." Connor pulled away for the second time, leading Kyle towards the bedroom.

"I –" Kyle started, looking genuinely freaked out for the second time that day.

"I thought I was supposed to be the one who was new at this." Kyle wasn't going to go toward the bed without resistance, but Connor was stronger. "I'm going to give you a backrub, Kyle, that's all. Then you can go back to work and meet your deadline."

"I… right." Kyle's brain was apparently still having trouble keeping up with his senses, but he stopped fighting Connor and lay down obediently.

Starting with the shoulders, Connor pressed his thumbs into Kyle's tense muscles. He moved along the spine and shoulderblades, pressing gently. Kyle's skin was smooth and damp, still overheated from the shower. Connor moved to his neck, fingers massaging the base of Kyle's skull, and Kyle made a happy little noise somewhere between a moan and a sigh. There were knots starting at the shoulders and continuing all the way down, and as Connor worked each one out, he could feel Kyle relax more. By the time he reached the base of Kyle's spine, the other man's breathing had deepened and evened.

"Kyle?" Connor said softly, just to check. There was no answer. As Connor had halfway hoped, Kyle was out like a light. He drew a blanket over him, pausing for a moment to stroke Kyle's hair. Kyle sighed, leaning into the touch. Connor smiled, and then quietly closed the blinds and left the darkened room.

Several hours of meditation, training, and distance running later, Connor found himself in the kitchen and the bedroom door still closed. The sun was setting, pinks and oranges spectacularly and flamboyantly painting the western sky. Connor chopped vegetables, enjoying the simple task. He'd nearly finished when the door finally opened and Kyle stumbled out, yawning and wrapped in the sheet. He squinted at the light.

"What time is it?" Apprehension dawned. "What _day_ is it?"

Connor chuckled and carried a plate out to him. "Around eight, the same day you went to sleep."

Kyle looked suspiciously at the plate. "What's this?"

"Eat your goddamn vegetables, Kyle." Connor pushed one of the room's two chairs towards him and sat in the other. "Better for you than coffee."

"Ha," Kyle muttered, but he sat down, still draped in the sheet and started eating. "That's pretty good," he said after a few moments.

"Thank you," Connor said graciously. All in all, it didn't really matter if it tasted good or not; the main idea was to properly fuel the body, something Connor doubted Kyle ever considered.

"Wait, where are my clothes?" Connor looked over to see Kyle putting his empty plate in the sink and frowning at the sheet.

"In the bathroom, where you left them." Connor knew this because he'd noticed the clothes when he'd taken his own shower; Kyle had folded them and placed them neatly on the floor.

"Where I…" Kyle choked. "I kissed you," he said. "That wasn't a dream?"

"You dream about me?" Connor hid a smile.

"….yes?" Kyle looked like a puppy, all big eyes and expression that said he expected to be kicked. Green Lanterns – scratch that, _superheroes_ shouldn't ever have that expression. It just wasn't _fair_.

Connor couldn't help it. He ruffled Kyle's hair. "Finish your deadlines and then we'll see where we are," he said.

"But you –"

"Your work is important to you. That's why you're here. I'm not going anywhere, Kyle." Connor trailed his fingers across Kyle's cheek and down his jaw, feeling the smoothness of the skin underneath the faint roughness of stubble just beginning to come in. "Finish your work and I'll see you in the morning."

As he closed the door, Connor could hear Kyle humming, and the sound made him smile.

TBC


	5. Birds in Flight

"But you don't celebrate Christmas." Kyle looked down at the box, perplexed. It was small, dark green with a bright silver bow.

"So?" Connor shrugged from his seated position on the floor. He'd been there when Kyle had come home; anyone else coming into his apartment through the window would have been highly disturbing, but Connor was a pleasant surprise. "It's about the spirit of generosity."

"In that case, I have something for you, too." Kyle grinned and set down the box. A small painting was leaning against the far wall, covered in cloth. He handed it to Connor without removing the covering.

"Thank you," Connor said, surprised. The painting was deceptively simple, a bird in flight against an autumn sky. It soared, free, high above the earth, seeming to almost touch the sun. Kyle wouldn't say it in so many words, but it was how Connor made him feel. The smile on Connor's face told him he didn't have to vocalize anything; Connor understood. In one smooth motion, Connor rose to his feet and pulled Kyle towards him for a long, slow kiss. Kyle melted into it, wrapping his arms around Connor's waist.

"I could learn to celebrate Christmas," Connor said as Kyle tugged him towards the bedroom.

TBC


	6. Anko

"That's not breakfast, Kyle." Connor eyed the mess of whatever it was Kyle was eating this time with a wrinkled nose. The scent of sugar and possibly artificial sweeteners was strong enough to fill the room.

"Yes, it is." Kyle pushed the rest of the bun in his mouth, green filling sticking to his fingers. He smiled at Connor and licked them off, slowly.

"It's candy." The filling was a sweet bean paste peculiar to Japan, Connor thought, generally considered dessert and eaten with sticky rice cakes or injected into sweetened buns. The latter was what Kyle had brought home from Hawaii, of all places.

"No, it's got vegetables in. It's health food." Apparently the presence of some kind of vegetable product that hadn't been processed past recognition was enough to count something as health food, in Kyle's book. Connor forbore from pointing out that beans weren't technically considered vegetables.

"It... is that tea?" he asked instead. He'd been trying to get Kyle to drink tea for months, but Kyle was too attached to his coffee and the various additives that ensured that the coffee did not actually taste of coffee by the time Kyle got to it.

"Green tea! It goes with the beans." Kyle made a half-hearted attempt to defend the cup from Connor's determined attempt to swipe it. Determined beat half-assed and Connor peered into the cup. The liquid inside was opaque and possibly syrupy.

"You... there's sugar in this. And milk." Connor swished the liquid around. It was definitely syrupy. He was almost tempted to taste it, but thought better of it.

"It's TEA. Of course there's sugar and milk in it." The expression on Kyle's face clearly doubted Connor's sanity, and Connor wondered where Kyle had learned to put milk in tea. He'd thought that was a British quirk, and he didn't think Kyle had ever been to England.

"Sugar tea and sweet beans aren't health food, you know." Cup back on the counter, Connor noticed a bit of green paste that Kyle had missed earlier. He snatched Kyle's hand up, ignoring the reflexive jump and startled exclamation, and ran his tongue over the tip of Kyle's finger. Kyle squirmed slightly, a slight blush darkening his cheeks. Connor ignored that, too, for the moment. "Hey, that's pretty good."

"See? Nutricious and delicious." Kyle reclaimed his hand, glaring ever so slightly. "Tastes –"

"If you say one word about chicken," Connor warned, searching for tea that hadn't been corrupted by things that should never, ever go into any kind of brewed drink, coffee included. He was unsuccessful.

"No chicken. No animal fats. Just delicious healthy vegetables." There was apparently an inexhaustible supply of the buns in Kyle's white paper bag. The next one Kyle started on had white filling, although it still had bits and pieces identifiable as former legumes.

"You are incorrigible." There was a speck of the white filling on the corner of Kyle's mouth. Rationalizing that he was just testing the possible differences in taste between the white paste and the green paste, Connor leaned over and licked it off. There was a definite smirk twisting Kyle's lips as he turned his head and pressed his mouth to Connor's. He caught the back of Connor's head, prolonging the kiss. He tasted like milk and sugar.

"That's why you love me," Kyle said, finally pulling away. His lower lip was just slightly swollen.

"Oh. Right. I forgot." Subject of conversation forgotten, Connor pulled Kyle to his feet. Breakfast or not, there were more productive things to do with their time.

TBC


	7. Splinter

_I hate waking up on the floor, and this is the second time this week. Deadlines, if I didn't have to meet these deadlines…_

Kyle leveraged himself off the floor with a groan. At least it looked as if he'd finished his assignment before apparently deciding the walk to bed wasn't worth it and the floor was the better option. A shower and a cup of coffee were called for, not necessarily in that order, and then he'd have time to drop off his assignment before he was due for monitor duty. He'd gotten through the coffee, boxed up his assignment, and was halfway through the shower when a rather loud crash sounded outside.

For a very brief moment, he debated just leaving it alone and finishing his shower, but a second and louder crash sounded. It was in this case that the ring really came in handy – Kyle was dry, soap-free, and in costume by the time he made it to the window. A quick look outside – he'd never thought he'd be so grateful to have a view of an alley – told him the coast was clear, and he leapt into the air. For a moment, vertigo sliced through him and he thought he was already under attack, but his head cleared and no one was in sight.

The source of the explosions wasn't difficult to find – smoke was pouring into the sky in two separate columns a few blocks to the southeast. Kyle flew to the larger one first, where several cars had been piled together and set on fire. There were no life signs inside, and he sincerely hoped that there wasn't anyone dead inside, either. Containing the fire was a matter of creating a bubble around the inferno and sucking out the oxygen – it died within seconds. The second conflagration – fewer cars, and again no one alive inside – didn't take any longer, but there was no immediate sign of the perpetrator.

The road itself had been shredded between both fires, cement buckling in the heat and the earth rent in long furrows. Two civilians and a dog were huddled near one of the rocks, and as Kyle got closer he could see that the man was trapped. He leveraged the rock to the side, careful not to overbalance any of the rubble, and ringed the couple to safety. A few people had come out to see what was going on, and Kyle ringed signs bearing the words "Danger! Stay back!". He didn't really feel up to shouting.

A rush of heat to his back sent Kyle into an automatic dive and he flipped around to see Effigy hovering behind him. The former Manhunter was grinning like a madman as he held up both hands and filled them with flame. Too tired to bring up something more complex, Kyle enclosed Effigy's hands in a bubble and solidified it. Effigy only grinned wider and pulled his hands apart. The bubble shattered, sending another wave of dizziness through him. In that moment, Effigy darted forward and threw a sphere of flame.

The fragile shield that was all Kyle had time to summon broke under the onslaught of the rushing fireball and he was slammed downward. A desperate reflex slowed his fall to the point of probably-not-fatal, but he misjudged exactly where the ground was and everything went dark.

* * *

_memory_

"We're going out in space for what, again?" Kyle fidgeted. He didn't have any work deadlines looming right that moment, but he didn't really want to leave Earth. Every time he'd gone out of the solar system recently, stuff had had a tendency to blow up in his face. On the other hand, it hadn't been going so well on Earth itself, either, so he supposed he should just resign himself to the mission, whatever it was.

"Kyle," Wally said, sounding distinctly annoyed.

"Huh?" From the look on Wally's face – what Kyle could see below the mask – Wally had just explained for the second time – third? – and Kyle had missed it. "Uh, sorry?"

As far as Kyle could understand from an explanation that was just barely short of tapping into the speed force, some kind of little aliens had had their souls sucked out by a swarm of littler aliens and these littler aliens had found their way through a natural dimensional rift that had been caused by the gravitational stresses of a black hole and a supernova. Or something.

"Suit up," J'onn told them both, and Kyle ringed on a suit. J'onn raised what would have been an eyebrow if he had them, and Kyle grinned. "Don't lose your concentration," J'onn said. Kyle shrugged at Wally, who had returned in a proper suit, perfectly adjusted.

The plan was relatively simple; the extradimensional aliens, which looked like nothing so much as tiny silvery fluffballs, spit acid, and could hit with enough percussive force to knock J'onn on his ass before he started hitting back, were easily herded. They bred like rabbits in the presence of oxygen, but fortunately there was little enough here to make it much of an issue.

Kyle set up a barrier, and Wally and J'onn forced the aliens into the funnel back through the tear. The last batch of the little round spheres was on its way down the tunnels when one of them bounced erratically and smacked Kyle hard across the side of the face. He kept the funnel in place through sheer desperation, but his suit vanished. He took one breath of acrid not-air before J'onn grabbed him and the touch focused him enough to flicker the suit back on.

"Are you all right?" Wally whirlwinded the last of the aliens through the closing rift. Kyle nodded, coughing.

"Fine," he choked out after a moment. "That was the worst air I have ever tasted."

"Don't you mean smelled?"

"Tasted," Kyle said firmly. "It's coating the back of my tongue. Yeeaaugh."

* * *

In the Watchtower, J'onn waited. With his telepathic link to the rest of the team, he was the one most often performing monitor duty, so that he could quickly alert whoever was needed for any given crisis. On this particular day, he'd caught a dam collapsing in Egypt, a freak thunderstorm in India, and a potential plane crash above Tokyo; nothing out of the ordinary. The Leaguers had been sent to deal with the problems, all of which had gone off without a hitch. He was, however, looking forward to the end of his shift. A nagging doubt in the pit of his stomach told him that he was going to run into trouble, but he firmly told it to go away. Green Lantern might be _late_ to monitor duty, but he always showed up.

Despite his assertions, J'onn found himself growing irritated when Lantern did not, in fact, show up on time. He directed one of the monitors to a video feed of Green Lantern's neighborhood and was surprised to see evidence of a fight – rubble on the ground and smoke obscuring the air. He refined the feed just in time to see him take a hit a raw recruit could have avoided and smash into the ground behind a charred mass of cars. Irritation faded to worry when Green Lantern did not reappear. The villain he'd been fighting was clearly cackling maniacally, fire leaking from every pore.

"Watchtower, one to transport," came a voice on an accepted frequency and J'onn hit the transporter control without thinking about it. Green Arrow – Connor Hawke – stepped out of the tube.

"Kyle?"

"You're on monitor duty," J'onn said, standing and pushing the boy towards the control panels. As much as he hated fire, there was no one else available to go help Lantern.

"What?" Green Arrow nearly tripped over the floor, but J'onn had transported out before Green Arrow could ask him anything else.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" Effigy singsonged, zigzagging back and forth above the battlefield. Most of the street was still fairly intact when J'onn arrived, although the random spurts of flame Effigy kept tossing into the ground certainly weren't helping. Invisibility being, in this case, the better part of valor, J'onn used it, and then scooped up a pebble. While his aim wasn't quite that of a Green Arrow, it was still accurate enough to peg Effigy in the forehead.

"Come out and face me, you coward!" Effigy screamed.

"Right here," J'onn told him, allowing himself to become visible and striking Effigy with a handful of concrete. The would-be supervillain went down, flames flickering out. J'onn caught him by the ankle and dropped him by the police car that had arrived at the edge of the scene. Without waiting for a reply from New York's finest, he turned and started searching for Green Lantern.

While J'onn wasn't one to call property damage lucky on a regular basis, in this case it was fortunate that the piles of still-smoking vehicles and the random spots of fire were enough to keep the onlookers away. Green Lantern was exactly where J'onn had seen him fall – unconscious, the ring dull, and completely naked. It was such a bizarre note that J'onn stared for a full half-second before removing his cape and wrapping Lantern in it. As an afterthought, he twitched the cape to cover Lantern's face, on the off chance that one of the people in the surrounding crowd might recognize him. He rose into the air, intending to fly directly back to the Watchtower before it occurred to him that Lantern needed to be conscious for his ring to protect him against the vacuum of space.

"Watchtower, two to teleport," he said into his communicator, and the world vanished into little sparkles of light and reappeared. A bit of relief that Green Arrow did in fact know how the teleporters worked snaked through him, but it vanished as he stepped off the pad to hear a crash. Green Arrow was staring at him, bow at his feet and face white.

"Kyle?" he said, taking one trembling step forward. "The news out of New York says Green Lantern is… he didn't…"

"He's not dead," J'onn said, and the color rushed back into Green Arrow's face. J'onn started toward the infirmary; the tech there was both advanced enough and user-friendly enough to take care of most problems, although J'onn already had a sneaking suspicion what was wrong with Green Lantern. Green Arrow jogged after him, and J'onn glared. "You're on monitor duty," he said.

"But –"

"Go." Green Arrow went.

As J'onn had suspected, Lantern had contracted a not particularly common and also not particularly pleasant viral infection during the cleanup mission roughly two weeks earlier. He'd warned both Lantern and Flash several times that the planet they were visiting was inimical to human systems, and then Lantern had – albeit briefly – lost his ring-generated suit. J'onn had checked them both out with the shuttle's scanners, and they'd both been clean, but he'd been meaning to do a more detailed scan at the Watchtower. He just hadn't gotten around to Lantern; Flash had presented himself within three hours of returning, virus free. Fortunately for all involved except Green Lantern, he hadn't reached the contagious stage. J'onn counted small blessings and programmed the computers to make the treatments.

* * *

Connor hung back, lurking near the door. Not that he would have described himself as lurking, really. He was just making sure there was space. Several Leaguers had drifted back into the Watchtower over the past couple of hours, various crises diverted, and they all had come at some point to see if their Lantern was in fact still alive. The rumor that Green Lantern had been killed in action was apparently going through the American cape community rather quickly despite J'onn repeating that it was not accurate.

"See? Not dead." That was Wally, poking at Kyle, who was still out. Connor grunted in reply, not sure if Wally was talking to him. Then again, no one else was in the room.

"Hi, guys." Or maybe not. "What's going on?" In Connor's admittedly limited experience, superheroes did not sound plaintive when asking questions, but Kyle was an exception to a lot of rules. Wally was laughing, which did not make the puppy-dog expression on Kyle's face go away. "None of these clothes are mine, I'm not bandaged anywhere, and I don't remember anything past – my deadline! What day is it?"

"Tough luck, Kyle," Wally said. "Hang in there." He zoomed away before Kyle could ask for clarification, and Kyle turned his eyes on Connor.

"Well, you're going to be fine," Connor said, but that didn't make the Look go away. "J'onn said it'd only take a few weeks."

"Weeks?" Kyle didn't quite squeak.

Connor pulled a chair over to the side of the bed and started explaining. At some point, he found that he'd taken Kyle's hand and was stroking the back with his thumb as he talked.

"You did not just tell me I have space flu." Kyle couldn't quite bury his face in only one hand, but he was making a pretty good effort. "Wait, you said weeks. J'onn said weeks. I don't have weeks. I have a job. I have deadlines." None of which was going to get him out of the infirmary any faster.

"Tell them the truth," Connor suggested.

"Oh, right. Space flu. Great idea." Kyle drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his free arm around them. "Connor…"

"Oh, no." That expression was no less distressing than the plaintive puppy-dog look, but Connor had no intention of being talked into anything that might get J'onn pissed off at him. Given a choice between an angry Kyle and an angry J'onn, the Martian Manhunter won hands down. Dating Kyle or not, Connor had a healthy sense of self-preservation.

"It's not that bad. I feel fine. I'm going to miss my deadline, Connor."

"I'll deliver whatever you have," Connor said hastily. "Give me the address and I'm gone."

Half an hour later, Connor was searching through Kyle's apartment for the box that Kyle had claimed contained the assignment, with no luck. As he looked under the table for the fifth time, his communicator went off.

"Did you find it?"

"No." Connor stood, knocking his knee against the tabletop. "And ow."

"It's right next to the door. You can't miss it."

A search by the door did indeed turn up a flat box, addressed but no postage, hidden under an overbalanced stack of newspapers. "It was under the papers, Kyle."

"What papers?"

"The newspapers. Whole pile of 'em."

"I was trying to recycle." Kyle sounded the tiniest bit defensive.

"You have to actually take them to a recycling center for that to work, you know." Connor shoved the papers away from the door and left, box under one arm. "I'm locking the door behind me and keeping your key. Just so you know."

"But I might –"

"The address on the box is the one where it needs to go?"

"Yeah." There was a sudden scrambling noise and then a hurried "thanks, Connor" before the line went dead. Connor shook his head and headed toward the street. The package wasn't difficult to deliver – Kyle's agent was at first furious at the delay and then worried when told Kyle would be unavailable for the next few weeks due to illness – but when Connor left the building, a sudden commotion down the street caught his attention.

A bouncing silvery ball of fluff was caroming off buildings, gathering attention from the crowd below. It didn't look dangerous, until Connor saw it hit a brick wall and leave a dent the size of a tractor tire, and he cursed himself for not having either his costume or his arrows within reach. He did have some small darts; he threw three in quick succession. They hit the fluffball and it shattered. The pieces rained down over the street, and then melted away. Connor frowned, but of all the strange things he'd seen, this wasn't even weird enough to rate a formal report.

* * *

_Two weeks later:_

Connor faced down another rampaging pile of fluff, wondering when things had gotten quite so out of hand. If he'd made the report when he'd first seen these creatures, perhaps they wouldn't have managed to breed so enthusiastically. Then again, given the reaction of these creatures' metabolisms to oxygen, it might not have made any difference at all. They were showing up all over the world, apparently mindless and flitting back and forth like butterflies. Unfortunately, they had a distinct tendency to shatter anything they hit, and any attempt to pound them into submission lead to fracturing and many tiny monsters.

Electric shocks and creating a vacuum seemed to be the only way to deal with the creatures. Connor, fully aware of the irony, had taken to raiding his late father's trick arrow collection to find and duplicate taser arrows. The rest of the Leaguers worked with whatever they had.

It seemed as if they'd gotten these things – someone had dubbed them "tribbles", which made no sense to Connor, but he wasn't going to complain – under control, or at least to the level of nuisance instead of world-devouring threat, but Connor really wished that they could just get rid of all of them. Kyle would have been a great help, but he was still in the infirmary; J'onn had noted that the treatment for his bug would be particularly unpleasant, and it left Kyle in no shape to fight. Or do much of anything else.

The tribbles swelled together in a group, and Connor thanked any deity listening for small favors. He readied a shot and sent it to the center of the mass. The tribbles flickered and their color dulled to an opaque gray. Connor clicked on his communicator. "Green Arrow to Watchtower. I've got another bunch for transport."

The only thing to do with the tribbles was keep them in a containment field until someone could figure out how to return them to their proper universe. Failing that, they'd just have to be kept frozen, and the moon was the safest place for that. Connor watched the sparkle of the transporter fade and then started combing the area to make sure no tribbles remained. They were like cockroaches, really.

Unable to find any trace of the tribbles, Connor asked for transport up to the watchtower himself, thinking of a shower, tea, and a visit to Kyle. No new tribble sightings having been reported, he found himself on the transporter pad and waved to J'onn.

"Connor."

Uh-oh. He stopped halfway to the door and turned around. "Yeah?"

"Make sure Kyle eats."

Connor blinked. "Okay." Relieved that he did not have to turn around and go back, he headed off to find his shower.

When he got to the infirmary, Kyle was bent over a sketchpad. Connor peered over his shoulder, but Kyle wasn't sketching anything other than geometric shapes and random doodles. He wasn't really sketching so much as listlessly pushing the pencil across the paper.

"Hey," Connor said. "Temperature down yet?" Kyle had been spiking fevers on and off at irregular intervals, not that it seemed to have much bearing on how much he did or didn't complain.

"Mm." Kyle didn't look up. "I'm bored."

"Lucky," Connor almost told him, and then caught himself. He'd been specifically instructed not to tell Kyle about the tribbles, because Kyle would probably go chase them. "Hang in there?" he said instead.

Kyle made a face. "You try being stuck here for days."

Connor ruffled his hair. "Hang in there," he said again. "You hungry?"

"No." Kyle picked up an eraser and erased a shape that looked meaningless to Connor. "You want my fruit cup?" he said hopefully, groping around the other side of the bed and waving the aforementioned dessert at Connor. It hadn't been opened.

"How about you eat the fruit cup?"

"I just got another dose of J'onn's torture device. If I eat now, it'll just come back up." Kyle dropped the cup back onto what Connor assumed was a tray. "Later."

"Are you sure?"

"Arrrgh," said Kyle halfheartedly. He flopped backwards, abandoning the sketchbook. "I'm going to go crazy if I can't look at something else."

That was a blatant subject change if Connor had ever heard one, he went along with it. "The mo- promenade?" The monitor room would have tribble imagery. The promenade, on the other hand, was probably safe. Kyle grinned, and Connor wondered if he'd just missed something. Bringing the sketchbook and a number of pencils, they headed out of the infirmary. Kyle kept leaning on Connor, but when asked whether – his temperature had not, in fact, gone down, if the heat he was giving off was any indication – he shouldn't be sitting still instead of walking, Kyle vehemently protested that he was _fine_.

"Your inability to support your own weight seems to contradict your statement," Connor muttered, but Kyle ignored him. The promenade was empty, perhaps not surprisingly, and Kyle settled against a wall, sketchbook in lap, and started sketching out the curves of the hall. Connor sat near him, cross-legged, and began a period of meditation. He'd had all too little time in the past couple of weeks, between Kyle and the tribbles.

A muffled thud from the lower levels broke Connor's concentration. He glanced over at Kyle, but Kyle had apparently fallen asleep over the sketchpad – which had a detailed drawing of Connor himself, now, framed against a half-finished starry sky – and Connor figured he'd be fine where he was. Climbing to his feet, he jogged down to investigate the sound. A few seconds later, a louder crash sounded and Connor broke into a run.

The noise had come from the tribble containment area. They were kept in one of the hangars, which had had the equipment removed and been depressurized. It was, at this moment, rapidly repressurizing through a rather large hole in the wall. Its outer doors were closed and the system was stable, so tribble-searching was the next order of business. One of the containment pods was open, and empty. Connor briefly checked the rest – safe – before following the sudden spate of crashes.

The single escaped tribble was wreaking havoc with the containment cells, and Superman was already chasing it. It managed to evade him and rocketed straight up through the ceiling, veering just slightly as it went out of sight. Superman followed it and Connor followed him.

By the time Connor reached the end of the tribble's passage, Superman had subdued it. The promenade was distinctly worse for the wear, but as far as Connor could tell, structural integrity hadn't been breached. At least, he hoped not; if the tribbles broke the Watchtower, someone would have to be pulled away from pest control to rebuild and the delicate balance they'd reached would tip. Someone would already have to rebuild the wall around the hangar, but Connor figured that would end up being the Flash, and it might not screw them over as far as the exploding tribble population was concerned.

"Arrow," Superman said, arms full of tribble, and Connor's wandering attention jerked back to the promenade. "Lantern's been injured. Please see to him."

Kyle was right where Connor had left him, sprawled over the sketchpad. Connor bent over him, checking for injury, and didn't know whether to laugh or scream when he realized that Kyle had just slept through the entire fight. After a few moments of trying to convince Kyle to wake up and walk back to the infirmary, Connor gave it up as a bad job and carried him instead. It was easier than he'd expected; Kyle weighed less than he had the last time Connor had had the pleasure of dragging him around. Back in the infirmary, he couldn't get Kyle awake enough to eat, either, despite J'onn's request, and before he could think of something to do about it, another alarm went off. Tribbles had shown up in Star City, and Connor was the only one free.

"No rest for the wicked," he muttered as he ran towards the transporter. "Or was that for the weary?" No rest either way. There had to be something they could do about the tribbles, something beyond damage control. Connor hoped that a plan was in the process of being created, because he had no idea what to do. Teleporting down, he checked his stock of arrows. He'd need to make more after this fight, assuming the tribbles didn't eat him alive.

* * *

Kyle was fairly sure that he never wanted to open his eyes, ever again. No matter what J'onn's space flu viruses would have done to him, it couldn't possibly have been worse than the fiendish concoctions the Martian seemed to take gleeful delight in spreading through Kyle's veins. He checked his train of thought; to be fair, J'onn probably wasn't indulging in schadenfreude, but that didn't mean his meds weren't horrendous. Half the time he couldn't think straight, couldn't draw, didn't even want to sometimes, and the rest of the time he spent plotting the most direct route towards the nearest porcelain god, right now being a case in point.

"I can't," he said, well aware of how petulant he sounded and not caring enough to try and modulate his voice. He wasn't sure he could, anyway; every time his temperature spiked, his control over his emotions and voice went straight to hell. It was ridiculous, but there it was.

"Eat it, Kyle."

No matter what it was, he wasn't going to touch it. Connor was going to have to force it down his throat, and not only was Kyle pretty sure Connor was way too nice to try a move like that, he was also fairly certain that it would result in him puking all over both of them. Or it would, if he had anything to throw up. "Uh-uh. It'll come right back up anyway."

It was entirely possible that Connor was going to break a tooth grinding his jaw like that, or possibly throw whatever he was trying to get Kyle to eat at him instead. Kyle couldn't bring himself to care, and that made him feel guilty. "I'm sorry," he offered.

"Look." This was clearly a last-ditch effort; he was almost home free, almost to the point of being left in peace with his complete and total misery. "If you just eat it, you'll feel better."

"How?" Kyle demanded, really trying not to sound as irritated as he felt.

"That's what J'onn said." Connor had reached the end of his patience; sick as he felt, Kyle could still read him like a book. Or maybe he was just making stuff up.

"Leave it and I'll eat it later," he countered. "Promise." He had no intention whatsoever of keeping it, but it wouldn't be the first time, and he hadn't been caught throwing anything away yet.

"Fine." Connor turned to go, and Kyle noticed what he hadn't when Connor had come in – that Connor was limping.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

"What?" Connor turned fluidly, but he couldn't quite mask that he wasn't putting his full weight on his left foot.

"You're hurt."

"It's nothing to worry about," Connor said. It wasn't the truth, but it wasn't quite a lie either, according to the changes in his body chemistry as tracked by Kyle's ring.

"Okay," Kyle said, not willing to push the issue yet. Connor shot him a suspicious look, but Kyle just closed his eyes and tried very hard to not be awake. He heard Connor leave, and the door close, and was drifting in and out of a not-quite-so-icky place when the sudden knowledge that someone was standing next to him woke him up thoroughly. He was not pleased. The Bat-eared shadow lurking over him looked less pleased, though, so he just stared at it.

"Lantern." That was the Bat-Voice.

"Batman," he returned, somewhat shakily. Batman was just _staring_ at him. "Um."

With something of a flourish, Batman pulled a chair up to the side of Kyle's bed, and sat down, managing to not catch his cape on anything or sit on it, or look like he was trying to avoid it.

"Did you need…" Kyle started and then trailed off. It sounded too much like 'What the hell are you doing here', and although that was exactly what he wanted to ask, it probably wasn't polite.

"No," Batman replied, and produced a paring knife from the depths of his utility belt. Kyle almost tried to grab it with the ring, completely sure that he wanted nothing to do with whatever Batman thought he was going to do with a tiny, curved, and probably _very sharp_ blade. When Batman produced an apple from parts unknown, he was sure of it.

"I…" he started, but he couldn't even get the syllable out against the reflexive wave of nausea. Batman ignored him entirely, apparently focused on peeling the apple. Kyle watched him for a few moments before he started drifting off again. This time, he was woken by something cool and wet pressing against his mouth. It smelled like apple, and he opened his eyes. Either he was hallucinating, again, or Batman was feeding him a piece of fruit. He waited a moment, and Batman didn't dissolve into smoke, but he did start looking impatient. _Batman_ was leaning over him and looking impatient. Despite himself, Kyle opened his mouth and accepted the apple.

Much to his surprise, it did not make a precipitous reappearance, and when Batman fed him another piece, Kyle accepted it. The second piece stayed down as well, and the third, and before Kyle knew it, the apple was entirely gone. The core was nowhere to be seen, but he wasn't about to ask where it was. Between one blink and the next, Batman was gone as well. Kyle would have been sure that he'd dreamed the entire thing, except that for the first time in days, he didn't feel so completely miserable, and there was one long perfect spiral apple peel sitting on the tray next to the bed.

The apple peel was still in one piece – Kyle was trying to decide whether or not he should get rid of it or not – when the earsplitting claxon of the general alarm sounded. There was only one way to react to that, no matter how he felt. Kyle had his uniform on and was headed for the monitor room before the first siren had faded. He reached the monitor room without being intercepted, which was a little surprising; not only should there have been someone on monitor duty at all times, he knew that Connor and Batman had both been in the infirmary only a few minutes ago.

The answer was on the screens of the monitor room – the entire team and some of the backup members were facing a swarm of fuzzy silvery balls that looked suspiciously familiar. Memory struck with the force of a sledgehammer and Kyle grabbed the back of a chair to keep his balance. The current swarm of not-so-cute little balls was of the same type as the alien invasion he and Wally and J'onn had put a stop to a few weeks before. The Leaguers were taking what amounted to potshots at the huge mass, but none of the aliens were acting aggressively. In fact, they were just swarming more tightly together, and starting to glow. For a brief second, the glow spiked, and Kyle put up a hand to cover his eyes. When the glow faded, the swarm of little round spheres had coalesced into a single shape. Its edges were fuzzy, and it looked _wrong_, somehow. Kyle wondered briefly if he might possibly be hallucinating, but then the alien lashed out and he decided it didn't matter.

The transporter worked just as well by remote; it was quicker than flying. Kyle set it and ran to the tube. It deposited him just outside the battlefield, and he was airborne as soon as he could see the blue sky over his head. A writhing limb knocked him out of the sky; he barely managed to slow his momentum enough not to crash into the ground. Shaking his head to clear the dizziness, he sent a construct to hold the alien in place. The alien twisted oddly, pulling away, and it felt like something was dragging at the inside of his head. Kyle went down on one knee and the construct melted, but the alien had been distracted enough for at least three Leaguers to get a good hold on it and try to smash it.

"Oxygen!" J'onn shouted at him mentally, and Kyle realized that Superman and Wonder Woman weren't trying to _smash_ it, they were trying to get it out of the atmosphere. J'onn was down there as well, but none of them could so much as budge the creature. Kyle struggled to his feet, threw himself forward, and grabbed a flailing limb. It whipped him back and forth, but since it couldn't really make him much dizzier than he was already, he gritted his teeth and hung on. He could see the alien, he could see it, and he poured a construct along its surface, all its twisty lines, until he could feel it meet with a pop on the other side. The alien struggled, but the construct moved with it, infinitely stretchable. The creature finally began to pull away from the ground under the combined efforts of several Leaguers, and Kyle added one more element to the construct.

Every bit of oxygen inside drained out. The creature struggled more wildly, nearly overbalancing its opponents, but it was still moving upwards, and it slowly grew still and started to shrink. Kyle gritted his teeth and held the construct in place, letting it contract as the creature shrank. The ground receded behind them until finally the stars shone brightly, and the alien was completely still.

"You can let go now," J'onn said, and Kyle dissolved the construct, shivering as he realized for the first time how damnably cold it was in space.

The alien began moving again, and Kyle almost tried to grab it before he realized that Superman was carrying the corpse off somewhere. "I'll scan for any left," he said instead.

"None remain," J'onn told him, and gave him an inscrutable look.

"I'm going, I'm going." Kyle backed towards the Watchtower, hands in front of him. J'onn just kept staring at him, so Kyle finally turned around and headed for the moon. The airlock opened to his code, none of the alien gunk was sticking to his gloves, and the Watchtower was empty. It wasn't any warmer inside than it had been outside, either. He wrapped his arms around himself and headed to the monitor room on the off-chance someone wanted to be teleported up, but he hadn't been sitting in the chair more than a few moments before he fell asleep despite the cold.

He woke in the infirmary again, Connor staring at him. It was worse than J'onn. At least J'onn didn't make inscrutable faces on purpose.

"Giant alien?" Kyle ventured. It _could_ have been a dream. At least he was warm now.

"You're lucky you weren't killed," Connor said. "Or that you're not worse."

"Luck of the Irish," Kyle informed him solemnly. "Works every time."

"Apparently." Connor reached out, cupping Kyle's face in one hand. "But they seem to think you did okay. For a rookie."

"Ha," Kyle muttered. He wasn't _ever_ going to be the one with experience, the way this was going.

Connor kissed him lightly on the forehead. "Next time, I'm going to tie you down." He might actually do it, too, but Kyle was pretty sure he could get out of the ropes.

"Promises," he said, just to see if he could make Connor blush. It didn't work, but it did get him a proper kiss.

TBC


	8. What Do You Mean, Contagious?

Connor moaned against Kyle's touch.

Kyle swore and plunged the not-so-cold cloth back into the bucket of ice water, wringing it out and placing it back on Connor's forehead. Despite the heat in the apartment and the blankets, Connor was shivering. "C-cold," he muttered through clenched teeth, and tried to shake the cloth off. Kyle held it on, wondering exactly when this had gotten quite so out of hand.

_Seventy-two hours earlier:_

"Promise?" Kyle asked. He didn't think Connor would actually tie him down, regardless of the reason, but trying to make his boyfriend blush was an easy game that he never failed to win. Much to his surprise, it didn't work this time, but Connor did give him a proper – if somewhat chaste – kiss.

"Go back to sleep," Connor told him. "You still have flu."

"Tease," Kyle grumbled, but while he felt better than he had in weeks, he wasn't about to argue. Not when he could feel gravity pulling down every square inch of his skin.

_Forty-eight hours earlier:_

"I don't see why we had to use the teleporter." Kyle rubbed Connor's back; none of the Arrows apparently did well with the whole molecule disassembly thing, but the trip down usually seemed to be better than the trip up. Connor had been particularly hard-hit by it this time nonetheless; he'd been praying to the porcelain god for what seemed like an inordinately long time. "I could have flown us."

"Shut up, Kyle," Connor choked out. Kyle grimaced and went to get him a glass of water; by the sound of it, there wasn't anything left in Connor's system.

"I thought I was supposed to be the sick one," he said, but under his breath. Finally getting out of the Watchtower infirmary – had it been nearly three weeks? – felt like the best day of his life. Mentally cataloguing a to-do list (work was pretty high up there, given his lack thereof for the better part of a month and rent was due), Kyle returned from the kitchen to find Connor sprawled over his couch. He proffered the glass, and Connor took it gratefully, holding up his other hand to shield his eyes from the morning sunlight.

"Now I know why my father hated that thing," he said. He looked absolutely pathetic; if Kyle hadn't know what he'd been doing not five minutes earlier, he would have given him a consolation kiss. As it was, there was nothing for it but to nod sympathetically. Kyle had never had much trouble with the transporter himself, but he almost never used it. Being able to fly through space had definite advantages.

_Thirty-six hours earlier:_

"See? Not dead." Kyle presented himself to his mother for inspection. "Can I come in now?"

"You could have called," she replied, standing aside from the door and opening it wider.

"I was on the moon!" he protested. The door didn't quite close properly behind him, and he turned to shove it back over the lintel. "I didn't even know the news reports said I was dead!"

"Still," she said. She had her arms crossed when he faced her again, that one eyebrow quirked up in that special way that said she was not happy with him at all.

"Look, someone from the JLA should have contacted you as soon as they knew I was going to be stuck up there," he told her.

"Superman was very polite," she allowed. "But it still would have been nice to hear from you."

"I – Superman?" Kyle buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry I didn't call, Mom." He looked at her with wide eyes. "But I'm okay."

Moira patted her son's shoulder. "I worry about you." Her eyes narrowed. "Have you lost weight? Come here, I'll make you a sandwich and some milk."

"I've eaten already," he said. "But thanks."

"Are you sure?" She reached out and pinched his side. "Good lord, Kyle, what happened to you?"

"I just spent three weeks with the worst case of flu I've ever had in my life," Kyle said. Her expression changed to over-protective mother-mode, and he backed up, hands out in self-defense. "I'm all better now! I swear. J'onn said I could go home and everything. Except no costumes until next week."

"I'd better not see anything about Green Lantern on the news until then," Moira said.

_Twenty-four hours earlier:_

Significant progress on the to-do list having been made – rent, work, and the visit to his mother – Kyle crawled into bed. Connor was already there, sound asleep, so Kyle just curled around him. When he woke several hours later, Connor was still there.

"Mmrr?" Kyle asked.

"Just watching you," Connor said.

"I don't know if that's endearing or creepy." Kyle started to slide out from between the sheets, but the heat from Connor's skin registered. "Are you feeling okay?"

"Little tired," Connor admitted. "I think it's the transporter."

Kyle put a hand on his forehead, checking it against his own. "I think you might have a bug. Just stay there and I'll bring you some tea."

"You're just glad it's not you being fussed over," Connor retorted.

"Damn straight," Kyle said. Finding no tea in his apartment, he eventually resorted to Radu's coffee house downstairs. Connor was asleep when he returned with it, so he just left it by the bed and went to work on one of his assignments.

_Twelve hours earlier:_

"Ugh," Connor said, sprawled on Kyle's couch again.

"Huh?" Kyle looked up, eyes threatening to refuse to focus on anything farther than six inches away. He finally got them to cooperate and realized that it was getting dark. He put down his pencils and switched on the light over his drawing board. "What's up?"

"You gave me your flu," Connor complained.

"Oh, no, you're kidding." Kyle was across the room in seconds, uniform on. He reached out and pulled Connor into his arms. "Watchtower it is."

"Yes, yes, I'm kidding! It was a joke!" Connor said hastily.

"Are you sure?" Kyle put Connor down and laid a hand against his forehead. "You're warm."

"I probably caught something from one of the kids at the hospital," Connor said. "There was a man with a chemical bomb and a list of demands as long as my arm."

"And when was this?"

"About the time you were trying to pay your rent. You didn't notice I was gone, and it didn't even make the news," Connor said.

"Uh huh." Kyle vanished the uniform and rummaged through his bathroom. He knew it was in there somewhere – the cupboard under the sink was filled to overflowing with bottles in various states of empty, but he finally emerged in triumph, waving a tiny bottle of cold medicine. "There it is."

"I'm not touching that," Connor said. "Do you know what's in it?"

"I'll take you to the Watchtower and tell J'onn you caught my flu," Kyle warned him. "Take it, sleep. You'll feel better in the morning, and if you don't, I really will drag you to J'onn."

"The Martian Manhunter is not a doctor," Connor said, but when Kyle approached him with a spoon he opened his mouth obediently. "Kyle, that is the worst-tasting…" He stopped and coughed, grimacing.

"It's cherry! I like cherry." Kyle recapped the bottle and left it on the counter.

"Of course you do," Connor muttered and pulled him down for a kiss. Not wanting to either catch Connor's bug or to overtax him, Kyle tried to keep it as chaste and quick as possible, but when Connor's tongue flicked against his lips, he parted them willingly.

"You're right," Kyle said a few moments later. "That does taste terrible."

"I told you," Connor said, but it didn't seem to bother him so much now. Kyle left the couch to him and started trying to make soup. Connor had kept trying to feed him while _he_ had been sick; it was only fair to return the favor.

As he was rather lacking in the soup-making department – Kyle, to be honest, was not a particularly good cook and admitted it – the majority of his preparations involved a can opener. He did add some fresh vegetables which had mysteriously materialized in his refrigerator (he suspected Connor) and remembered at the last second that Connor wouldn't eat the chicken noodle. A brief search turned up a can of minestrone that looked promisingly animal-product-free, so Kyle put the vegetables into that instead and brought a bowl out to the living room.

Connor was not in the living room. A brief search – minus the bowl of soup – showed him to be in the bedroom, with several of Kyle's shirts on the floor and a pair of leather pants that Kyle had bought some years ago and never actually worn currently hugging Connor's really very nice legs and ass. "They're yours," Kyle said without thinking.

Connor turned around, a silvery gray shirt in his hands. "Hmm?" he said.

"I mean, what are you doing?"

"I want to…. dance," Connor said. Kyle blinked. Connor's face was a little flushed, but he didn't feel warm to the touch, and he looked otherwise fine.

"Dance," Kyle repeated, just to make sure he'd heard properly.

"Yessss." Connor slipped the shirt on, fastening the various bits and pieces. It always took Kyle far too long to put that particular shirt together, which was why he never wore it either, but Connor was finished in seconds. "Aren't you ready yet, lover?"

Dancing it was.

Apparently an upbringing at a Zen Buddhist temple and the accompanying skill set included a perfect sense of rhythm and grace, or perhaps Connor came by it naturally. His movements were more and more fluid, sliding through styles with increasing rapidity until Kyle couldn't keep up and begged a rest and a drink. Connor ignored the drink, but he leaned against Kyle with a complete disregard for the sidelong looks from people around them.

"Kiss," he said, quietly enough that Kyle was the only one who heard him.

"Not here," Kyle hissed back.

"The hell's wrong with you?" Connor pushed himself off Kyle, stumbling and catching his balance on a nearby chair.

"With me?" Connor was visibly swaying on his feet, and Kyle was pretty sure he hadn't actually been drinking, unless he'd gotten something while Kyle hadn't been paying attention. It would explain a lot – Connor didn't normally drink, and if he'd gotten something by accident, it would wreak havoc with his system. "What's wrong with you?"

"You act like… like… like there's something _dirty_," Connor said, loudly enough that people really were startifng to notice and turn around. This was not a discussion Kyle wanted to have with half of the New York club scene looking on; it wasn't that he was ashamed of being attracted to or sleeping with men, it was just that there was a time and a place for conversations like these and this wasn't it.

"Maybe I should take you home," Kyle said, and Connor threw a punch. It was way off target, worrying enough for an Arrow, but Connor overbalanced behind it and Kyle barely caught him before he hit the ground.

"Thank you," Connor said calmly. "Go to hell," he added, just as calmly, but since Kyle was supporting most of his weight, he chose to ignore that second utterance.

"Going home now," he said. "You've had enough fun for one night."

"Fuck you," Connor said, and Kyle thought he must have misheard him until they got outside the club and Connor's angry half-struggle to detach himself from Kyle turned into a clinging vine impression instead. "Fuck me."

"What did you _drink_?" Kyle said. There was an empty alley with no lit windows and he took advantage of it to ring a mostly opaque transport. This probably counted as personal misuse of his powers, but right now he didn't really care.

"You hate me," Connor said, and the automatic flare of anger that Connor could even _think_ that died when Kyle saw the lost-puppy look on his face.

"I could never hate you," he said, and cupped Connor's face between his hands. "Never." Connor tasted like cherries and alcohol. Kyle started to move back, but Connor made a little mewling noise and leapt onto him. Kyle had bare seconds to put the transport down onto the nearest tall rooftop and fix it there as firmly as he could before Connor all but ripped his shirt off.

_Eight hours earlier:_

"Well, this was clearly a bad idea." Kyle kept the sentiment as quiet as possible. Not only was gravel digging into his back, his favorite shirt had been ripped to shreds, and Connor had not been drunk no matter how he'd acted. Hangovers, in Kyle's experience, didn't usually come with high fevers. He gathered up the clothes and carried Connor back to his apartment, making sure to keep him warm. Connor snuggled against him and smiled, so he couldn't have been feeling _that_ bad, Kyle reasoned.

_Now:_

"Hold still," Kyle said. The thermometer, once he managed to get Connor to hold it under his tongue long enough, read 102. "That's it." He ringed his uniform on and picked Connor up. "Watchtower, two to transport. Green Arrow requires medical attention."

Once in the medical bay, J'onn again took charge and kicked Kyle out. Waiting in the hallway for the wrath of J'onn to fall on his head didn't seem particularly wise, but Kyle wasn't going to run away, either. It didn't take long for J'onn to emerge, and he didn't look happy.

"Green Lantern," he said, in a deep rumbly sort of voice.

"Yes?" Kyle did not squeak.

"I was under the impression that you would have more of a sense of responsibility than to impart bodily fluids to a teammate while still in the contagious stages of recuperation," J'onn said.

"That's my flu?"

"It is not flu," J'onn said, fixing him with a glare that was somehow more frightening than the look he'd had while telling Kyle not to screw his teammates when sick.

"I'm sorry, J'onn."

"Fortunately, his tenure will be far shorter than yours," J'onn said, changing the subject abruptly. "I estimate three days at most." He swept past Kyle, turning once to add, "He is your responsibility, Green Lantern. Take care of him."

Kyle nodded and entered the infirmary. Remembering how he'd felt with this flu, he was deeply glad Connor would only have to put up with it for three days. Remembering how he'd acted with the flu, he supposed turnabout was fair play and resolved to be as patient with Connor as Connor had been with him. At the sight of his lover's sleeping face, it didn't seem like such a difficult resolution to keep at all.

TBCf


	9. House of Love

Mia was at the kitchen table when Kyle made his way out of the bedroom. She was so completely familiar that he didn't notice at first, and even said, "Good morning."

"Hi, Kyle," she said. At the sound of her voice, the fact that she was sitting at his kitchen table at seven-thirty in the morning crashed through his morning pre-coffee fog, and he jumped.

"What? What?" She was half out of her chair before he'd gotten both feet back on the ground, hand at her side.

"Nothing." He ran a hand through his hair and tried to look dignified. "What, um." He swallowed and tried again. "What are you doing here?"

"Ollie had something to do, and he didn't want me alone overnight. Since Connor's here, he just sent me over." She settled back into the chair and re-opened her book.

"Wait, how long have you been here?" Connor was supposed to have time _off_ so they could actually do something fun that didn't involve supervillains.

"Just a few minutes, and I have school in a bit. I'll only be here a couple days, if that's okay." She had puppy eyes. It wasn't _fair_.

"Yeah, yeah, okay." Who was he to turn away a friend? Even if Mia wasn't precisely his friend, per se, she was Connor's. Speaking of which – "Where _is_ he, anyway?"

"Oh, I saw him when I came in." As if on cue, the shower started running, and Mia grinned. "He said he'd finished his morning workout and wanted the bathroom before you got up."

"That bastard," Kyle said, pouring coffee and dropping gracelessly into the other chair. "It's too damn early," he said in response to Mia's inquiring stare.

"Well, you know," she said, picking up her own coffee cup and taking a sip. "He could be an inspiration to us all."

"Yeah, that or I'll have to have him shot for making the rest of us look bad." Mia's delighted giggle was almost as good as the coffee, and by the time Connor wandered into the kitchen with water dripping from his hair, Kyle felt almost human.

"Do you need a ride?" he asked, after claiming a morning kiss.

"I'm good." She drained her coffee and made for the door.

"You're staying, right?" Kyle asked, once the door had closed.

"Why wouldn't I?" Connor gave him a bemused look, reaching past the coffee pot and unearthing the tea he'd left in the cupboards during his last visit. "Ollie's still in Star City."

"But Mia…" If there was a crisis in Star City requiring Ollie's full attention, surely Mia would want to be involved.

"Oh, it's not work." Connor had found the teapot, too, although Kyle had tried to hide it. "Don't worry about it."

Given a quiet day in New York, enough completed work that he had actual free time, his rent and bills for once up to date, and his partner also present and with free time, Kyle couldn't help but worry. The first thing he'd learned about the superheroing business was that things never went well. "You say that," he said, not quite under his breath, "and yet."

"Don't be ridiculous." Connor's warm hands rubbed his shoulders. "She'll be fine."

"Wait, how does she have school here? You guys live in Star City." Kyle couldn't believe it had taken him that long to realize the oddity in the earlier conversation with Mia. He eyed his coffee cup. Maybe it had been switched to decaf.

"There's a cultural exchange program. Just this week." Connor shrugged. "I think Ollie did it on purpose."

"What _is_ he doing?"

"Yeah." Connor grinned. "I could have sworn I explained this last week."

"Last week." The week before, he'd been in Star City and some nutcase had gotten his hands on enough alien tech to make some kind of anti-gravity field. Fortunately for the sanity of all involved, he hadn't had enough imagination to make anything more dangerous than flying motorcycles with VTOL capability. On the other hand, flying bikes plus weapons and a local gang was still the equivalent of mayhem. The tech had been secured, the bikes dismantled, and Kyle had ended up with a concussion. They'd been yellow bikes, which really shouldn't have made a difference, except that he'd also just come off of a recitation of Guy Gardner's list of the top ten moments in which Hal Jordan lost to mustard, and he'd flinched at exactly the wrong moment. "You told me before or after I got a bike thrown at my head?"

"I told you in the emergency room."

"You took me to a hospital?" He didn't remember that at all.

"We didn't stay long. You kept insisting the ring would fix it." From the expression on Connor's face, he no longer believed that the ring actually did heal physical damage.

"Well, it did," he said after a moment. Connor raised an eyebrow. As Kyle started to explain how it worked, the light coming through the window darkened and shifted to an odd shade of gray. "What's that?"

"Storm coming in?" Connor didn't sound like he believed it, though, and he was already changing into his costume.

"Weird energy." All Kyle had to do to be appropriately attired was think at the ring, and he was ready long before Connor. "There's some kind of a dome over the city."

"What kind?" Connor was pulling on his boots, quiver already strung across his back. "Can you tell?"

"I don't know. I can't find a source." The ring would only give him an oddly fluctuating energy reading; it was consistently strong across the entire grid, and the whole city was under the grayish dome. It was a matter of moments to contact the police and tell _them_ that he was on it, and that it was probably of alien origin, and no one should go near it, and they should all probably stay inside, at which point he was politely but firmly told that they were perfectly capable of handling the populace if he would just go to work, please, and fix the problem.

"Any more bright ideas?" Connor asked, perhaps an hour later. The barrier was stretchy; rather than break under pressure, it simply bent outwards. That wouldn't have been a problem; Kyle would have pushed until it _had_ shattered, except that – in Connor's words – its volume was constant. If he pushed it out at one point, the entire thing shrank everywhere else, and it had bent the top of several broadcasting antennae before he'd given up trying to get through it that way.

"Nothing goes through it." He'd tried the JLA communicator, on the off-chance that someone else would know what this was and have a bright idea, but the signal had bounced back. "It just absorbs heat. And cold. And spreads them out."

"Who could do something like this?" Connor asked, leaning against the barrier and folding his arms. It rippled around him.

"Yet another sick bastard," Kyle said absently, not really paying attention to Connor's rhetorical questions. Digging underground had just shown him that the barrier was perfectly spherical, but he hadn't tried cutting through it yet.

"No, I mean who has the capability to pull this off?" Connor said.

"Oh. Oh!" Kyle thought for a moment. "That's actually not a long list, and most of them are… well, they should be, and…" He could think of at least a few people crazy enough – and brilliant enough – to engineer this kind of energy shield with Earth technology. "Unless it's aliens," he said finally. "We don't know if it's just New York, or if this is everyone."

"Well, if we're up against aliens, the League probably knows something. Someone's always on monitor duty," Connor pointed out.

"So we have to break through it. That's what's most important." Not that it changed what they were trying to do, really. It just gave him some added motivation.

Sharp implements had no more effect than trying to punch a hole in the barrier, and he was about to give up entirely when what could only be some kind of beacon lit up. White light streamed out of a column precisely in the center of the bubble.

"Well, then," Kyle said after a moment, and started towards it. Connor caught his ankle. "What?"

"It's a trap," Connor said, as if Kyle didn't know that.

"It's also the source of whatever's doing this. Probably," he pointed out.

"That doesn't mean you should go charging in there." Connor tugged at his foot, and Kyle floated back to stand next to his friend.

"I'm listening."

The origin of the beacon was still hidden by other buildings as they got closer, staying low to the ground and using said buildings to mask their approach. Kyle had ringed a silent motorcycle, paying no attention to Connor's objections, but when the school in the center of the white light became clear, it was Kyle's turn to stop Connor rushing in.

"What?" Kyle hissed at him. "What is this? Stick to the plan!" Not that there was much of a plan besides try to sneak in and see who they could find.

"That's where Mia's exchange program is!" Connor hissed back, still trying to twist out of the construct around his waist. He'd pulled his wrist right out of Kyle's initial grasp, which was why Kyle had resorted to fighting dirty.

"Coincidence?" He didn't think so, but stranger things had happened.

"I don't _know_." Connor stopped struggling, so Kyle let the construct fade. "We have to get in there."

"We're doing the same thing we were," Kyle assured him. "Mia's fine."

"You don't know that. She hasn't answered since we saw the shield. I've been trying!"

Guilt that he hadn't even thought to make sure Mia was safe flared up, and Kyle pushed it away. It would do no good now. "We'll find her. She's fine."

The column surrounding the school was more than just white light; it formed a solid wall all the way to the street, crackling with energy. Kyle reached toward it and it parted under his hand. He shrugged and started to step through, but a yelp from Connor followed by a thud stopped him in his tracks. "Connor!"

The barrier had tossed Connor halfway across the road, singeing his gloves. "I'm okay," he said.

"Maybe you should stay out here." Not that Kyle doubted Connor's competence, but there was such a thing as picking one's battles.

"I don't think so," Connor said, and started towards the barrier again.

Kyle gave up. "Stick close," he said, betting that there would be enough of a hole in the forcefield to allow Connor to pass. Besides, if that worked, he could get the students out the same way.

The barrier hissed as the two of them inched past it, the opening barely wide enough to accommodate both of them. It snapped shut as soon as Kyle cleared it, writhing more fiercely than before.

"I don't know if that will work again," Connor whispered.

"Sssh." The column of light should have been blindingly bright on the inside, but it was barely brighter than a full moon in the early hours of the morning. The windows of the three-story school were dark, somehow giving the impression of abandonment despite being whole and clean. The flags in front of the entrance hung limply at half-mast, colors muted. "Melodramatic," Kyle whispered back. "I don't think this is aliens." His ring wasn't registering much other than static, as if some kind of jamming device was broadcasting on all frequencies.

"I defer to your expertise," Connor whispered back.

The school grounds outside the main building were empty; the cars dead in the parking lot, the sheds behind the baseball fields shadowy and abandoned. The bleachers shuddered as Kyle circled them, but there was nothing underneath. Neither of them had really expected to find anything outside, but Connor had pointed out that not having an unpleasant surprise come up behind them was probably a plus.

"Is anyone in the building?" Connor asked.

"I can't tell." He thought there was something alive in the building, but it could have been anything. The ring barely told him that Connor was alive and present, and he was less than a yard away. "Maybe."

"Very helpful," Connor said drily, and then pulled the front doors open.

The hallway inside was dark, the fitful light from the barrier behind them glinting off a glass case against the far wall. Dark shapes inside the case could have been anything; when Kyle looked away, he could see them moving out of the corner of his eye. The ring responded readily enough to a mental command, but what should have been a bright ball of light was as dim as the barrier light, barely displacing the shadows.

"It doesn't go brighter," he said in response to Connor's quirked eyebrow. It should have shone with the light of the sun, but the darkness barely fell back a few feet.

The offices near the door were empty as well, chairs pushed neatly back towards the desks and all the visible paperwork neatly stacked. There were Styrofoam coffee cups in the trash, and still-wet mugs set carefully next to the sink.

"Why would they clean?" Kyle asked in a low voice. Connor shrugged.

"Maybe it was just the timing."

"It's weird."

The library was darker than the hallway, and Kyle had to force a ridiculous amount of will into the ring to keep the light in his hand from going out. He could feel himself sweating against the pressure, and he almost breathed a sigh of relief when the library proved to be as empty as the offices.

The first body was in a classroom; it was too dark to tell whether or not the person in question was staff or student, or even the gender. Kyle wasn't about to touch it, and the pressure of the dark returned the second he stepped across the threshold.

"What is it?" Connor hissed. The prone form was on the other side of the room, under the windows.

"Something pushing against me," Kyle forced out through gritted teeth. "I can't…" The light flickered, and he forced it back.

A sharp click followed by a reddish flare broke his concentration entirely, and the light from the ring went out. Connor stepped in front of him, holding an emergency flare. It should have been starkly bright, producing sharp-edged shadows, but it too was muted and almost dull. Connor held it over his head, and the dark pooled around his feet.

"That's not human," Kyle said, pulling Connor's hand and the torch with it towards the form on the ground. It was a pile of bags and shoes, carefully arranged to look like a person.

"I think –" Connor started, and the first form came silently out of the dark.

The girl was still wearing a school uniform, plaid skirt and dark blazer neatly pressed. She rushed towards them, a heavy textbook held over her head. Connor knocked her aside with his free hand, pulling Kyle into the hallway as the mass of people at the back of the room rushed forward. There was almost no sound, just the whisper of clothing and the soft patter of feet striking the floor. Most of them carried no weapons, only reached out with rigid grasping hands, eyes glowing in the combined light of the ring and the flare.

The hallway was still clear, and Kyle ringed a shield over the door. The students bounced off of it, pressed into it, and finally settled into a silent stare. Kyle backed away, not taking his eyes off what he was absolutely willing to label zombies.

"We have a problem," Connor whispered urgently.

"Yeah. Undead high school kids and they're trying to _eat us_, I think that's a problem," Kyle hissed back, willing the barrier to stay over the door as hard as he could.

"Not that problem."

"What?" His concentration wavered and the students surged forward. He was barely able to catch them again.

"That's not the only class," Connor said, louder now. The hallway was starting to fill up with students edging slowly out of the classrooms, and it would have looked exactly like a perfectly normal school day if not for the shadow staining the light and the fact that the entire student body was shuffling silently in the same direction.

"Yeah, that's a problem." The pressure against Kyle's ringed shield increased with every touch, and Connor led him down the hallway. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere else." Connor was looking back and forth, scanning the students' faces through the dimness, and Kyle hoped he didn't see Mia. "Do you know what's wrong with them?"

"No." He couldn't scan the students, not without losing the shield, and it had never been so difficult to keep concentrating.

"This way." The mass of students parted grudgingly as Connor pulled him towards the end of the hall, still reaching out silently, faces still utterly blank. The pressure increased, and Kyle was suddenly aware of an almost subsonic whine. Dissonance shrieked, half of it almost too high to hear and the rest of it so low that it was barely more than a physical vibration, and Kyle knew what the source of the pressure was.

"You. Bastard." The sound got louder, and he had to choose between staying on his feet and maintaining the shield. The shield won, and Connor caught him.

"Kyle, are you…" His voice was inaudible over the buzzing, but Kyle had finally figured out how to stop it. The construct over his ears muffled all sound, and the pressure vanished so abruptly that he nearly lost the shield altogether. Connor was looking at him quizzically, and Kyle pointed to his ears.

_Don't you hear that?_ he mouthed. Connor shrugged, looking baffled until Kyle ringed earplugs for him, too.

_Oh._ Connor shrugged and said something that Kyle did not pick up at all. At Kyle's blank stare, he pointed down the hall. Yellow light shone from around the closed gymnasium doors, brighter than anything he'd seen inside the school yet. _There._

"Of course it's a trap," Kyle said, and pushed his way through the crowd. He could hear his own voice, but nothing else. The students had stilled, and they offered no resistance now, but he didn't let the shield down.

The door to the gymnasium swung open under his touch, yellow light streaming out. Inside, it was too bright to see anything, and Kyle held up a hand to shield his eyes. Sharp-edged shadows at the edges of his vision were almost painful, but nothing compared to the figure in the center of the room. It was so brilliant that Kyle missed Mia, in full costume, until Connor knocked him aside and an arrow thudded into the ground where he had been standing.

The doors crashed shut behind him, vibrating the floor, and the coruscating figure in the center of the room finally turned around.

"Alex Nero."

It made far too much sense in retrospect – who else but his antithesis would be capable of generating enough energy on his own to hold a city hostage? The last time Kyle had fought Nero, he'd needed Alan Scott just to stay alive and actually defeating Nero had taken the rest of the Justice League.

"Mia!" Connor ran forward, and Mia turned his forward momentum into a throw that sent him sliding across the polished wood floor. Kyle couldn't spare any further attention for his friend, though, because Nero was stalking towards him.

"Well met," he said with an incongruous smile. If Kyle hadn't known the man was a psychopath, he still would have found that face creepy.

"Like hell," he said, arming himself with a blaster and a shield. Almost before he could blink, Nero was surrounded by an army of yellow shapes. Their shapes shifted, no two the same, no construct remaining the same from one moment to the next. Kyle wasn't sure whether or not that illustrated Nero's mental agility, but he was for damn sure that the man was crazy and this was only confirmation of it. Of course, if he were doing it on purpose…

"Hell?" Nero's face twisted. "Do not speak to me of hell. You know nothing of hell."

"And your dialogue sucks," Kyle muttered, careful to keep it under his breath this time. His distraction cost him; one of Nero's constructs ran forward, and only sheer luck kept his ribs from being split wide open by the biggest axe he'd ever seen. Nero was ready to take advantage of that luck, though, and Kyle had to twist out of the way of a mostly naked ninja with a pair of swords who shifted smoothly into a woman wearing a Renaissance dress and carrying spears halfway into her attack. He couldn't help shrieking as she nearly impaled him, and that made armor his best bet. _Screw the little shield._

Armor gave him enough of a breathing space to collect all of Nero's little constructs in a maze – and keep Connor separated from both them and from Mia, because they did need to help Mia but if she was trying to impale Connor with pointy little sticks that meant she could wait her turn in a little box as far as he was concerned and Connor had no defense against constructs which put him squarely in the classification To Be Defended – but Nero didn't seem to care.

"You lack imagination," he said, still hanging back and smirking.

"Ass," Kyle muttered, and tried to bind him with constructed rope. Nero shattered it and a net started to materialize around Kyle. He cut through it, but the ground opened up under his feet and he had to make a desperate leap towards solidity. On the off chance that Nero would do the same thing to Connor and Mia, he gave Mia's box and Connor's maze a floor, which gave Nero the opening to come at him with a very straightforward handgun.

Again, the armor stopped the bullets, but they stuck and started burrowing, and Kyle had to let the armor fall away and take the bullets with him, at which point Nero's demons nearly buried him.

There was only one way to end this fight. Kyle waded forward and threw a punch. It hurt like hell, but Nero staggered, and half his constructs faded into intangibility. Kyle hit him again, but somehow Nero wasn't where Kyle thought he would be, and Kyle tripped. Nero's fist connected with his jaw, and he slid along the floor.

"You _bastard_," he said again, and threw himself at the other man. Later, he would have no clear memories of the next few moments; even while it was happening, it was only a haze of hard bone and soft tissue until Kyle found himself on the ground with Nero's booted foot across his throat.

"How long have I waited for this moment," Nero started to say, and then he fell sideways to hit the floor with a resounding thud. Connor stood over him with a baseball bat in hand.

"Thanks," Kyle said, taking Connor's extended hand and letting himself be helped to his feet. "Also, ow." He encased Nero in a sensory deprivation tube before looking around; making sure the lunatic couldn't perpetrate any more insanity was clearly the first priority. "Where's Mia?"

"Mia is right here," she said, limping over to them. "What the hell was that?"

"That was…" Kyle paused. "The usual," he said finally, unable to think of a concise explanation. "We should check on everyone else."

Mia shrugged and nodded; Kyle checked her thoroughly for any kind of neural damage, but she was unharmed. She'd suffered bruises and a few pulled muscles in her fight with Connor, and he'd fared no better (but no worse). Kyle couldn't do anything with the ring for either of them, although it was already healing the damage Nero had inflicted on him.

The students and faculty appeared unharmed; whatever Nero had done to them seemed to have dissipated when he lost consciousness, and Kyle couldn't find any adverse side effects in the two dozen people he scanned for damage. The barrier had dissipated as well, and Connor notified the police that the matter had probably been taken care of while Kyle tried to figure out what to do with Nero. As he started towards Gotham, though, the unconscious form within his construct faded away to nothing.

Unmaking his construct set a note fluttering free. Kyle dove down to catch it, and as soon as his fingers touched the yellow paper, words started appearing in bold strokes.

_See you soon._

The paper crumbled into dust and the dust faded to nothing, and he was left staring at the darkening sky.

"He's not gone, is he?" Connor asked. He was perched on a nearby rooftop, although Kyle had no idea how Connor had managed to follow him so efficiently. Practice, he supposed.

"Probably not." He sighed. "I've seen him before. I'll see him again. Hey, I get a rogue's gallery. My very own collection of supervillains."

"It's a sign," Connor told him seriously. "You haven't established yourself in the cape community until you have at least one archenemy."

"Does that mean they'll stop asking for the Real Green Lantern?" That had come out more bitterly than he'd expected. Hal was dead, had redeemed himself with his final act, and Kyle had been left to carry on alone.

"Hey," Connor said, and Kyle floated over. "You _are_ the real Green Lantern." He tugged Kyle down onto the rooftop and gave him a quick hug. "Let's go home."

TBC


	10. Broken

"Connor?"

He couldn't quite take the blame for what had happened to Connor Hawke, but Kyle Rayner couldn't help feeling that if he'd only been there, Connor would have been safe. Intellectually, he knew that he couldn't have been, that there had been too much going on with the Corps and even in his own personal life, but he'd failed the person he cared most about.

"Yes?"

Connor turned around, and he was alive, and healthy, and _awake_. The memory of how he had been, in the hospital (empty eyes, a facsimile of life), flashed through Kyle's mind and he shoved it away, along with the vague feelings of guilt that he hadn't even known Connor was missing. Hal had told him later that Connor had been found and was all right, and after the flash of joy came the crush of wondering when he'd gotten so very out of touch with the world he called home.

_That's going to change now._ This was a second chance, and he was going to do it right this time.

Kyle threw himself into Connor's arms, a running leap he'd made countless times before. Connor caught him, hands firm against Kyle's back as Kyle wrapped his legs around Connor's waist. So familiar, and such a rush of memory – why hadn't they done this in so long? Kyle cupped Connor's face, gloves melting away for the touch of bare skin, and leaned down to kiss his beloved.

The look of shock in Connor's eyes registered a split second before Connor shoved him away, one hand pressed against the back of his mouth. Kyle landed hard, too surprised to even think about using the ring to catch his fall.

"What the hell was that?" Connor demanded.

"What do you mean, what the hell was that?" Kyle snapped back, climbing to his feet. "I'm sorry I wasn't here, but that's no reason to push me away like that."

"I don't even know who you are!"

The worst part was that Connor was telling the truth – the ring helpfully confirmed that his vital signs were consistent with someone who believed what he was saying. "Kyle," Kyle said softly. "Kyle Rayner. I've known you since you started using the name Green Arrow."

"Green Lantern," Connor said, some of the defensiveness easing out of his stance. "I… don't remember much from … from before." He wasn't quite apologizing, but he wasn't pushing Kyle away, either.

"You helped me look for my father," Kyle told him. "You were the reason I tried so hard to get along with your father, when he came back the first time." He and Connor had shared so much, and he tried to give him the memories, speaking rapidly, tongue all but tripping over itself as Connor simply stared at him without response.

Finally, Connor just shook his head. "I don't remember any of it."

"I loved you," Kyle said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. He was torn between relief and joy that Connor was alive and well and the feeling that having him back like this was almost worse than not having him back at all. It amounted to the same thing, really – the Connor that Kyle had known was dead.

"I'm sorry," Connor said, and he sounded as if he truly meant it. There was a wall, though, a polite but firm shell that clearly said _keep your distance_. It hadn't been there when Kyle had first called his name, not even when Connor had shoved him away, but it seemed insurmountable now.

"So am I," Kyle replied. Replacing his mask and gloves, he did what he had done so many times now – in the face of a tragedy on Earth, he returned to the Corps. It was the only constant he had, the only source of continual stability. The Corps would always be there, even as everything else slipped away.

FINIS


	11. Walk Through Walls

_Why am I soaking wet?_ Kyle Rayner was acutely aware of several things in the moment after waking, the first of which was possibly the least pertinent. Aside from the matter of being drenched in a liquid that he fervently hoped was only water, there was someone else pressed closely against his back. Furthermore, as far as he recalled, he shouldn't have been asleep at all, much less in a bed that smelled distinctly musty. "Painting," he muttered. "I was painting."

Kaaterskil's Notch was the last clear memory he had – moving a few things into a room, setting up a canvas, and picking up a paintbrush. He didn't remember what he'd been about to paint, but the first color he'd chosen had been green.

"Okay, Kyle, where are we." He bit down on his tongue to stop the nervous and barely audible monologue. Verbalizing his thoughts probably wasn't a particularly good sign. Opening his eyes slowly and peering through his lashes got him a darkened room. A huge window above him and not more than a foot away showed a starry sky and patches of darkness he thought might be trees. The only part of this knowledge immediately relevant was that he was trapped between the wall and the person behind him. Very slowly, Kyle inched towards the wall. He wasn't quiet enough, or careful enough, because whoever it was jerked awake.

"Who are you and what are you – Where have you taken me?" There was an edge of panic in the very familiar voice, so well suppressed that if Kyle hadn't known better, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.

"Connor!"

"Kyle? Kyle Rayner?"

At precisely this moment, Kyle realized that he not only had no link to the Central Battery on Oa, the source of his powers as Ion, but he had no access to any of the energy of Ion, either. He had intended to create a simple light, but not even the smallest spark formed. It wasn't a lack of mental concentration, either – he'd been subjected to various types of mental chaff over his years as Green Lantern and all of them carried distinct side effects.

"I can't – my – the Central Battery, it's gone," he said, trying to reach the internal reservoir. It was as if the Ion powers had never existed at all.

"What are you doing here? And why am I here?" Connor, as always, kept straight to the point, refusing to be distracted, although Kyle was more worried about being cut off from Oa than he was about waking up in odd places. It had happened before. Hell, it happened to Jack Knight all the time.

"Dunno," Kyle muttered, still searching for Ion. There was nothing, absolutely nothing. It was like having the ground drop out under his feet, without warning, and the ceiling simultaneously smashing down.

"Where _is_ here?"

"I don't know!" Kyle struggled for control of his voice. "I'm sorry, Connor. I didn't mean to shout."

"It's good to see you again," Connor said softly, and Kyle thought he was smiling.

"You, too." They'd been close, once, when Connor had been learning what it meant to be Green Arrow and Kyle had been struggling with the legacy of the Corps. Time, and space – not just ordinary earthbound distance, oh no – had pulled them slowly apart, and Kyle found himself regretting it. "How've you been?"

"Same old, same old," Connor said, and chuckled. "It's not a normal month if someone isn't shooting at me at least once."

"I hear that," Kyle said, finding himself smiling as well.

"We should probably figure out where we are," Connor said after a moment. "Please tell me that this is water," he added.

"You're all wet, too? I thought it was just me."

A vague sense of movement was followed by the sound of water splashing onto the bed. "That came out of my mask," Connor said.

"Your mask is tiny," Kyle said. He might not have seen Connor much recently, but he did know that his friend's mask had not changed – it was a narrow strip of cloth with holes in.

"Yes," Connor answered drily.

"Hey, I'm in street clothes." Kyle ran his hands down his body, squeezing the water out of his shirt and swiping it across his bare chest. It didn't really get him any drier, and the wet denim of his jeans wouldn't squeeze out anyway. "How come you're in costume?" Another thought occurred to him. "Hey, have you got your bow?"

"No weapons, at all," Connor said after a moment. He sounded faintly surprised, which Kyle supposed meant that even the tiny darts Connor kept around in case his more obvious weaponry was removed had been taken. "You don't have your ring?"

"Don't need one," Kyle said. "By which," he added, "I mean that I _should_ be able to access the Central Battery without one, but I can't feel it."

"Ion, huh?" The bed shifted as Connor climbed off. "The floor's lower than it looks. Be careful."

How Connor could see anything at all in what appeared to Kyle to be pitch black was a mystery, but Kyle was willing to follow. He wiggled his foot off the edge of the bed, but it was lower than he'd expected, and the floor higher. He still managed to trip putting his other foot on the ground, and when he stood up, the mattress was above his waist.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, bruised ego and all that." Kyle shuffled forward a few steps, hands in front of him. Maybe he'd hit a wall, and a light switch, and that would be an acceptable first step in figuring out where they were and how they'd gotten there.

"Um, Kyle?" Connor sounded a little worried now.

"Yeah?"

"What do you see?"

"A really, really dark room." It figured that Connor would have really good night vision, which would be more useful if he'd find a light switch with it.

"The sun is shining in the window." There was definite worry in Connor's voice.

"Isn't," Kyle retorted. "I see stars."

"Let me check your eyes," Connor said, and Kyle realized Connor thought he meant little fuzzes of light consistent with a blow to the head.

"Not those –" he started, and then felt Connor's bare hands on his face. The room blurred slightly around him and the floor seemed to tilt. Kyle staggered, but so did Connor, and they ended up hanging onto each other for balance. When Kyle's vision cleared, the room was considerably lighter, and the window over the bed displayed a sunset in the most glorious shades he'd ever seen.

"That was weird," Connor said, pulling his attention away from the sky.

"Weird is not the word," Kyle replied, letting go of Connor and pulling back. It was colder than it had been a moment ago, and he buttoned up his wet shirt. It didn't help ward off the chill much, but anything was better than nothing. Now that he could see it, the room looked like an ordinary bedroom, double bed under a window and a chair and desk in one corner. Dust lay thick over everything, and their booted – in Connor's case – and sneakered – in Kyle's – feet had left prints in the pale carpet. Connor's face was smudged with sticky wet dust, too, and his clothes. Kyle didn't even want to look at his shirt – it was probably filthy, too, although that wasn't really pertinent to the dilemma at hand. "Is that a door?"

The door in question was set flush against the wall, frame melding so smoothly with the floral wallpaper that Kyle wouldn't have seen it if it had been papered, too. Connor eyed it for a moment, before motioning Kyle to one side. "In case it's boobytrapped," he said softly. Kyle felt his eyes widen and he flattened himself against the wall as Connor instructed.

"There's nothing in the ceiling," he offered quietly, belatedly scanning above their heads. If his years as a flying hero had taught him one thing, it was that nobody ever looked up, and he wasn't about to make the same mistake.

"Thanks," Connor returned just as quietly, conducting an investigation of the door. Kyle didn't know what he was looking for, but Connor had produced a tiny flashlight from inside his boot and was determinedly searching for something, cupping his hand around the beam so that no stray light escaped. "Stand back," he said eventually, returning the flashlight to his boot. Kyle was fairly sure Connor should have had a neat little belt with pockets on, but it appeared to be missing.

"You sure you don't want me to do that?" he couldn't help offering. Connor was the one more likely to be able to avoid any traps, but Kyle had been invulnerable – or close to it – for so long that it felt odd to have someone else protecting him.

"Stay there," Connor said. Kyle put up his hands in a show of surrender and then covered his ears, just in case. Connor eased the door open from behind it, crouching down well below the average position one might expect from someone operating a doorknob. The door swung inwards with a squeak of rusty hinges, horrifically loud in the silence.

Nothing happened.

Connor probed the empty doorframe for a tripwire, just on the off-chance, but nothing happened. "I feel a little silly," he said, standing and pulling the door all the way open.

"Better silly than dead," Kyle said, joining him in front of the door.

"True," Connor agreed, peering into the hallway. A window was directly on the left, outside shutters closed. On the right, the hallway stretched down into half-lit darkness, candle-shaped lights fastened to the wall in old-fashioned bronze sconces. Most of them were flickering or dim, only a few shining brightly. Some were out altogether. There was enough light to see that there were doors at regular intervals down the hall and that they, too, were set into the wall. Wood paneling ran halfway up the wall and stopped, giving way to wallpaper of the same floral print that had graced the room in which they had awoken. It made Kyle wonder if the place had been redecorated at all since the 70s.

"I'm not sure if this is an improvement," he said.

"Pick a direction and start walking," Connor suggested.

"Right, or right?"

"I'd say… right." Connor grinned at him, and despite not knowing what the hell was going on, Kyle was glad of the chance to go through it with his friend.

"After you," he said.

"Sure, make the archer take point," Connor deadpanned.

Kyle grinned. "Not at all," he said. "Age before beauty."

"In that case, shouldn't you be going first?" Connor asked innocently.

"Touche," Kyle muttered, but he stepped through the doorway first. "It's a door," he announced. "Leads to a hallway."

"You'll be a detective someday, with that keen sense of observation." Connor joined him, rapping his knuckles on the window. "It's painted shut, did you notice? Just like the one in there." He motioned to the room, but the door was closed.

"It was?" Kyle hadn't noticed.

"Otherwise I would have suggested we go out that way," Connor said.

"Painted shut, then," Kyle repeated. He started down the hallway, Connor following. After perhaps thirty feet, it branched to both sides.

"Which way?" Connor looked down both hallways, but they looked identical to the one in which they were standing. The doors were at the same intervals as well, which meant that on each corner was a room with two doors, and that the building couldn't be square, or any kind of quadrilateral; the window to the outside of their room had been directly opposite the door. He shared these conclusions; although he was fairly sure the information wasn't relevant, he'd learned the hard way that sometimes it was the most innocuous piece of knowledge – or its lack – that got you killed or worse.

"You're the one with a sense of direction." Kyle had had the same thoughts about the shape of the building.

"Go straight," Connor said after a moment. He started across the hall, but Kyle was poking at the wall with something. "What is that?"

"Pen," Kyle said, holding up a drawing pen. "It was in my pocket, and this way, we know where we are." He'd drawn a circle with an arrow pointing straight down. Across the hallway, he drew another one. "See? Roadsigns."

Connor wasn't convinced that the building would be enough of a maze to warrant graffiti on its wallpaper, but it didn't hurt anything. Besides, they'd been kidnapped. Their kidnappers could deal with a little graffiti. As they moved on, it occurred to him that if anyone else happened to be in the building, they'd just made themselves that much easier to find. He told Kyle so.

"Oh." Kyle hadn't thought of that. "I'd rather fight than be lost," he offered after a moment. Connor couldn't argue much with that.

The hallway branched twice more before coming to a T-intersection, and Kyle marked the walls both times. None of the halls looked any different than the one they were currently following, and the T-intersection was no exception. "Which way?" Kyle whispered.

"Left," Connor said. Kyle dutifully marked the wall with an arrow, and they continued. This time, the corridor bent sharply to the right, ending in a double swinging door. Kyle glanced at Connor, shrugged, and walked through the doors. "Wait!" Connor hissed sharply, but Kyle was gone. He'd only seen darkness through the doors in that brief moment, and the doors had swung shut with a heavy viscosity, as if the air around them was denser than it should have been. Connor stood for a moment, weighing the alternatives, but there was really only one thing to do. He stepped through the doors.

For a very brief moment, Connor fell. He landed on something softer than he'd expected, and a brief examination via flashlight proved it to be Kyle. His friend was out cold, something that did not bode well, particularly since Connor couldn't find any sign of injury. He shone his light up towards the doors, but there was no sign of them. The walls were painted white, grimy and smudged with years of smoke. A half-door directly behind Connor had been nailed shut, boards criss-crossing it and determinedly fixed to the wall.

The hallway in front of them bore no resemblance to the one they'd fallen out of, except for being a hallway. The ceiling was low, and there were exactly two doors before the hall abruptly ended not far away. The floor was an incongruous linoleum, an indeterminate color and as grimy as the walls. Actual torches with flames were fixed to the wall at irregular intervals, burning slowly and steadily. Their smoke rose straight up, collecting on a ceiling that was all but black. Connor put his flashlight between his teeth and tried to rouse Kyle.

"Get off me-" Kyle came awake swinging, but it was uncoordinated and ridiculously easy to dodge.

"It's just me," Connor said around the flashlight. "Hold still," he added, and shone the flashlight in Kyle's eyes. The pupils dilated normally, and Kyle answered three when Connor held up three fingers, so he figured that was good enough.

"I see spots now," Kyle complained, rubbing his eyes. Connor's flashlight had gotten brighter.

"Complain later," Connor suggested. He started down the second hall, but the house started to shake back and forth, dancing as if in an earthquake. Connor braced himself against the wall for stability as the shaking got worse, and Kyle clung to Connor for dear life. The torches knocked against the walls, but none of them fell or went out, although Kyle was expecting that they all would. As abruptly as it had started, the shaking subsided, but as it did so, something behind the nailed over door started pounding. It was a very regular beat, three taps in rapid succession, a pause, and one more. Both Kyle and Connor swung around to stare at the door as the pattern repeated itself, once, twice, three times.

"Hello?" Connor said loudly. "Is someone in there?"

The knocking stopped, halfway through a repetition, and then started up again as a steady series of single blows.

"Hello?" Connor said again, taking a step towards the door. The knocking sped up almost imperceptibly and the torch closest to the door flickered. Connor took another step, Kyle sticking close to his side and glancing behind them periodically. Without warning, the flickering torch died, the flame vanishing and the embers glowing brightly for a bare second before dying. The smoke rising from the ash darkened and slowed to a halt. "Are you hurt?" Connor said more loudly. The knocking sped up again, and Connor made as if to start walking, but Kyle tugged at his arm and pointed mutely at the bottom of the door.

Frost crept out from beneath the door, sparkling in the flickering light remaining in the hallway and creeping up over the wood of the door and the dirty paint indiscriminately. It spread along the floor, too, and Kyle pulled Connor away. Whatever was behind that door didn't need their help. The line of frost reached the next torch and it went, out, too. Connor was moving on his own, now, and the two of them reached the curve of the hallway just as the last torches flickered and died. The hall swung into a staircase leading down.

Kyle caught the barest glimpse of a set of stairs before the last torch flickered out and he could feel a chill on the back of his neck. A strong hand encircled his wrist and pulled him downwards, and he followed Connor without hesitation. The stairs were spaced oddly and he stumbled on the third one down, sure he was going to fall and take Connor with him, but although he'd been sure he'd seen an entire flight of steps, flat ground met his questing feet. Momentum propelled him ahead of Connor and through a doorway, and once again the flickering of firelight met his eyes.

"Didn't we –" Connor turned around the check the stairs, but there was only a blank stone wall behind them.

"I'm getting damn sick of this," Kyle growled. The current room was huge, walls of stone and a vaulted ceiling. A fireplace big enough to walk into without ducking his head held a hot blaze smelling of pine, but there were almost no furnishings in the room itself. A rug that looked to be made of some kind of dead carnivore was in front of the fire, and various lamps without cords dotted the walls. There was nothing else. Kyle stalked over to one of the lamps, picked it up, and threw it into the fire.

"I am done playing your games!" he shouted to the ceiling. Nothing happened, so he went to the next lamp, and the next, smashing them against the wall. The ambient light in the room, oddly, did not decrease. "Show yourself!" Kyle shouted, somewhere around the sixth smashed lamp. Connor remained by the fireplace, two shards of more or less flat glass in his hands, eyes scanning the walls and ceiling.

Shattering the twelfth and last lamp plunged the room into darkness. Kyle clenched his hands into fists and put his back to where he thought the wall should be. "I hate magic," he muttered. It never ended in anything good. The scent of dust and mold filled the air, and Kyle sneezed. Light filtered dimly through his eyelids, and when he opened his eyes again, it was to see a the living room of what would have been a perfectly normal North American suburban house if it hadn't had sheets over all the furniture. Intact light bulbs would also have gone a long way towards fostering the illusion of normalcy.

"Door's locked," Connor said. He was standing at a wooden door with two locks and no windows. There were curtains over what looked to be a picture window between two armchairs, but they wouldn't budge when Connor pulled on them.

"This is getting ridiculous." Kyle picked up one of the chairs, sheet and all, and threw it at the window. It crashed through, shattering the glass and landing with a crunch of snow. Cold air blew in through the hole in the glass. Kyle picked up a lamp, yanked the cord out of the wall, and knocked the rest of the glass out of the frame. "All right, let's go." He grabbed the frame and pulled himself up onto it, but as soon as both his feet left the ground, vertigo swept through him and he pitched backwards. Connor caught him, but it wasn't until Kyle had both feet on the ground that the dizziness receded.

"I don't think –" Connor started, but Kyle wasn't about to let a lack of balance stop him. He took a running leap at the window, but this time the vertigo kicked in before he could properly push off and he nearly crashed into the wall. Connor caught him that time, too. "Bad idea," he said succinctly.

Kyle shook his head irritably. "There has to be a way out of here." He had more to say on that subject, but his words were forestalled by another familiar figure tumbling through the broken window.

"Alex Nero," he said. "So this is your doing?" It all made sense – Nero could create constructs that rivaled Kyle's for complexity and realism.

"What have you done to me?" Nero roared, and launched himself at Kyle. Kyle braced himself against the impact, but Nero went straight through him and faded before he hit the ground. Kyle staggered, staring at the spot where Nero had vanished.

"Who are you talking to?" Connor asked, puzzlement writ over his features.

"I—he was right there!" Kyle pointed. "You didn't see him?"

"You must've been banged harder than I thought." Connor tried to shine the flashlight in Kyle's eyes again, but Kyle pushed him away.

"I know what I saw."

"If you say so." Connor was clearly humoring him.

"I'm checking the other rooms." Kyle stalked towards the doorway. Opposite the front door, it led to a dining room complete with table and hutch of dishes looming out of the shadows, kitchen on the left and ending with a small living room area occupying the far wall on the right. The kitchen's one window was locked and too small to climb through, so Kyle left it alone. There was nothing else of interest in the kitchen – empty cupboards and dust – but there was something unquestionably eerie about the whole situation. A tapping at the window made him jump, but it was only a tree.

An unlocked door, at right angles to the kitchen doorway, proved to lead to a set of stairs winding down to the left and an outside door straight ahead. The outside door was locked as well. Kyle briefly considered trying to smash it, but it probably wouldn't do any good. He left the basement alone for the moment, as well; cold rolled up from it in waves and he'd never gotten out of a building by going underground. Except maybe in New York, where they had subways, but he sincerely doubted there was any kind of public transportation here. Trying to convince himself that not going down to the basement had nothing to do with nervousness and everything to do with the fact that he could see his breath when standing at the top of the stairs, Kyle returned to the kitchen and carefully closed the door.

"Find anything?" Connor called from the living room. He was at the front door, poking at the lock with something or other.

"It's freezing," Kyle replied, and exited the kitchen. Going around the table in the dining room gave him another doorway and a hallway so short it barely merited the name, just long enough for a door on the left and one on the end. The door on the left opened into a bathroom, and for just a moment, Kyle thought someone was standing in the bathtub. He struck automatically, and the shower curtain wrapped around his flailing hand and came crashing down.

"Kyle!" Connor's footsteps pounded towards him.

"It's just the – I'm fine," Kyle called back. "Get the door open."

"Fine, fine." Connor reversed direction before he came into view and Kyle disentangled the stiff plastic from his hands. It flaked off, coating his skin with grime, and he turned to the sink to wash it off. The water was cold at first, but he stuck his hands under the flow anyway – he'd half-expected there to be no running water at all. The water warmed quickly, and somehow seemed more viscous than it should have been.

"Wait, I didn't turn the hot water on," Kyle muttered and looked down to see dark liquid flowing over his hands. He suppressed a shout and jerked his hands out of the sink, grabbing the nearest towel and scrubbing. As soon as he looked back at the sink, though, the water was clear again and his hands clean. He cleaned off every drop with the towel before switching off the tap anyway, wiping his dry hands on his damp shirt.

The last door in the hallway – the last room on the first floor – held more furniture, indeterminate shapes under white sheets. Kyle stepped into the room, heading for the window. Halfway there, something brushed his head, and he reached up absently to push it aside. He froze when his hand encountered the smooth leather of a shoe, and he looked up slowly and unwillingly to see a body swinging from a ceiling that was much higher than it had been when he'd walked through the door. Kyle did shout, then, and searched frantically for a way to cut the body down. It plummeted to the floor as soon as he tugged unthinkingly on one leg, rope slithering from the ceiling to coil over a chest Kyle knew all too well.

"Hal," he whispered, and Connor came crashing into the room.

"What's wrong?"

Kyle tugged the rope away from Hal's neck, listening for a heartbeat and not finding one. An ugly mark circled Hal's throat, but his face was curiously untouched; it was still and peaceful in a way that anyone who hadn't known Hal would say was like sleep. Hal was _never_ still, not even when he slept. His skin was still warm, and maybe there was still a chance. Kyle started CPR, locking his elbows like he'd been taught and pushing. "…four, five, breathe. Come ON, Hal."

"Kyle, what are you doing?" Connor looked disturbed, edging slowly into the room as if there was something he didn't quite want to approach.

"It's Hal!" Kyle said between thrusts. Three, four, five, and breathe. "Help me, Connor!"

"Kyle, there's no one there."

Kyle opened his mouth to tell Connor that he could go to hell, but his hands crashed to the floor, and when he looked down again, Hal was gone. "What the…"

Connor pulled him to his feet, peering in his eyes with the flashlight, and Kyle let him do it. "You seem normal," he said.

"But he was _there_," Kyle insisted. "It was Hal!"

"Like it was Nero in the living room," Connor said.

"I know what I saw!" Kyle climbed to his feet and shoved at the window. It opened easily, letting a blast of freezing air carry snowflakes into the room. Outside, a blizzard had started, snow swirling heavily enough to obscure the sight of the houses Kyle had seen across the street earlier.

"We really have to get out of here." Connor reached out and shut the window. "You go in the other room where it's warmer, and I'll get the door open." Kyle let himself be herded out of the room, but he stopped as soon as they got to the end of the hallway.

"This doesn't add up," he started to say, but the house shook as another earthquake hit. More severe than the last, it threw Kyle to the ground. Connor landed heavily on top of him, and Kyle could hear furniture toppling and glass breaking.

"Stay down!" Connor said, but Kyle could see the ceiling starting to cave over Connor's head and there was no way a human could survive that. No matter how skilled Connor was, no matter how much training he'd had, it was meaningless in the face of an entire house collapsing on top of him. Kyle pushed Connor off and crouched above him, hands raised. Desperately he reached for Ion, for the energy that he knew was there, and cool green fire rushed through him. He flung up a bubble just as the ceiling crashed inwards, no time to think of anything more complex, barely enough time to reinforce it.

The weight of the house never hit. The shaking and the sounds stopped as soon as the bubble sealed around Connor and himself, the world outside going dark. "Connor?" Kyle said, but as he looked down, Connor faded into green transparency before flickering out, and Kyle found himself face down on the bed in his room at the Kaaterskill Notch. "Huh?" His throat felt as if it had been violated with sandpaper and his eyes were almost too heavy to keep open.

"Our apologies, Ion." It was a Guardian voice, if not a Guardian face. "Despite our approval of how you handled these abilities the first time you possessed them, circumstances have changed. We had to be sure."

"You…" Kyle pushed himself over so he could stare at where the Guardian should be. "You were _testing_ me?" He couldn't put the anger he felt into his voice; there wasn't enough energy.

"It was necessary." The Guardian's voice faded on the last syllable, but Kyle wasn't ready to finish the conversation. There was absolutely no call for the Guardians to test him by throwing him into a pile of crappy meaningless illusions. He summoned the Ion energies, willing his uniform on and intending to fly all the way to Oa and pound down the doors if he had too. He hurled himself into the air…

…only to find himself sitting straight up in bed, morning sunlight pouring through the windows and a nasty headache building behind his eyes. He rubbed his temples with his palms, but it didn't help. He had the oddest impression that just before waking he'd been about to go somewhere, but now he couldn't remember where or why. Only a fading memory of fury remained. For some reason, he had a strong sense that he'd been talking to Connor, and it made him wonder exactly what his friend was doing. "Should go visit him," Kyle said to no one in particular, squinting at the sunlight.

FINIS


End file.
